



Class JQ/L5_£Q. 



Book. 

CoipghtN°_ 



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ZJ 



WESTWARD WITH 
THE PRINCE OF WALES 




H. R. H. THE PRIXCE OF WALES 



WESTWARD WITH 
THE PRINCE OF WALES 



BY 

W. DOUGLAS NEWTON 

AUTHORIZED CORRESPONDENT IN AMERICA WITH 

H. R. H. THE PRINCE OE WALES 

AUTHOR OF "GREEN LADIES," "THE WAR CACHE," ETC. 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 

1920 



'"** 



trf\ 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



PBIKTBD IN THB FNTTED 8TATB3 OF AM1BICA 

JUL 26 1920 ' v 

V- 

©CI.A597561 



TO 

"A. B." 
AND THE CARGO OF " CARNARVON." 



) 



PREFACE 

It was on Friday, August i, 1919, that " the 
damned reporters " and the Times correspondent's 
hatbox went on board the light cruiser Dauntless 
at Devonport. 

The Dauntless had just arrived from the Baltic 
to load up cigarettes — at least, that was the first 
impression. In the Baltic the rate of exchange had 
risen from roubles to packets of Players, and a 
handful of cigarettes would buy things that money 
could not obtain. Into the midst of a ship's com- 
pany, feverishly accumulating tobacco in the hope 
of cornering at least the amber market of the world, 
we descended. 

Actually, I suppose, His Royal Highness the 
Prince of Wales had been the first interrupter of 
the Dauntless' schemes. Lying alongside Deven- 
port quay to refit — in that way were the cigarettes 
covered up — word was sent that the Dauntless 
with her sister ship, Dragon, was to act as escort to 
the battle-cruiser Renown when she carried the 
Prince to Canada. 

Though he came first we could not expect to be as 
popular as the Prince, and when, therefore, those on 
board also learnt that the honour of acting as escort 
was to be considerably mitigated by a cargo from 
Fleet Street, they were no doubt justified in naming 
us " damned." 

We did litter them up so. The Dauntless is not 
merely one of the latest and fastest of the light 



viii Preface 



cruisers, she is also first among the smartest. To 
accommodate us they had to give way to a rash of 
riveters from the dock-yard who built cabins all 
over the graceful silhouette. When our telegrams, 
and ourselves, and our baggage (including the 
Times' hatbox) arrived piece by piece, each was 
merely an addition to the awful mess on deck our 
coming had meant. 

Actually we could not help ourselves. Dock 
strikes, ship shortage and the holiday season had all 
conspired to make any attempt to get to Canada in 
a legitimate way a hopeless task. Only the Ad- 
miralty's idea to pre-date the carrying of commer- 
cial travellers on British battleships could get us to 
the West at all. The Admiralty, after modest hesi- 
tation, had agreed to send us in the Dauntless, and 
before the cruiser sailed we all realized how for- 
tunate we were to have been unlucky at the outset. 

We sailed on August 2 from Devonport, three 
days before Renown and Dragon left Portsmouth, 
and when one of us suggested that this was a happy 
idea to get us to St. John's, Newfoundland, in order 
to be ready for the Prince, he was told: 

" Not at all, we're out looking for icebergs." 

We were to act as the pilot ship over the course. 

We found icebergs, many of them; even, we 
nearly rammed an iceberg in the middle of a foggy 
night, but we found other things, too. 

We found that we had got onto what the Navy 
calls a " happy ship," and if anybody wants to taste 
what real good fellowship is I advise him to go to 
sea on what the Navy calls " a happy ship." How- 



Preface ix 

ever much we had disturbed them, the officers of 
the Dauntless did not let that make any difference in 
the warmth of their hospitality. We were made 
free of the ward-room, and that Baltic tobacco. 
We were initiated into " The Grand National," a 
muscular sport in which the daring exponent turns 
a series of somersaults over the backs of a line of 
chairs ; and we were admitted into the raggings and 
the singing of ragtime. 

We were made splendidly at home. Not only in 
the ward-room that did a jazz with a disturbing 
spiral movement when we speeded up from our 
casual 1 8 knots to something like 28 in a rough sea, 
but from the bridge down to the boiler room, where 
we watched the flames of oil fuel making steam in 
the modern manner, we were drawn into the 
charmed circle of comradeship and keenness that 
made up the essential spirit of that fine ship's com- 
pany. 

The " damned reporters," on a trip in which even 
the weather was companionable, were given the 
damnedest of good times, and it was with real re- 
gret that, on the evening of Friday, August 8, we 
saw the high, grim rampart wall of Newfoundland 
lift from the Western sea to tell us that our time on 
the Dauntless would soon be finished. 

Actually we left the Dauntless at St. John's, New 
Brunswick, where we became the guests of the Cana- 
dian Government which looked after us, as it looked 
after the whole party, with so great a sense of gen- 
erosity and care that we could never feel sufficiently 
grateful to it. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 
CHAPTER 

vil 

Preface 

I Newfoundland * 

II St. John, New Brunswick x 9 

III On the Train between St. John and Halifax . . 37 

IV Halifax, Nova Scotia . - 44 

V Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and Habi- 
tant, Canada • 5 8 

VI Quebec 67 

VII The Mobile Hotel de Luxe: The Royal Train . . 83 
VIII The City of Crowds: Toronto: Ontario .... 91 

IX Ottawa 1I3 

X Montreal: Quebec . . 13 1 

XI On the Road to Trout J 4° 

XII Picnics and Prairies J 5 r 

XIII The City of Wheat: Winnipeg, Manitoba . . .164 

XIV The Fringe of the Great North-West: Saskatoon 

and Edmonton l8 3 

XV Calgary and the Cattle Ranch *97 

XVI Chief Morning Star Comes to Banff and the 

Rockies 207 

XVII The Pacific Cities : Vancouver and Victoria, British 

Columbia 222 

XVIII Apple Land: Okanagan and Kootenay Lakes . . 239 

XIX The Prairies Again 2 * 9 

XX Silver, Gold and Commerce z6 3 

XXI Niagara and the Towns of Western Ontario . . 275 
XXII Montreal 2?9 

XXIII Washington 3 ° 3 

XXIV New York 3 21 

xi 



WESTWARD WITH 
THE PRINCE OF WALES 



CHAPTER I 

NEWFOUNDLAND 



ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland, was the first city 
of the Western continent to see the Prince of 
Wales. It was also the first to label him with 
one of the affectionate, if inexplicable sobriquets that 
the West is so fond of. 

Leaning over the side of the Dauntless on the day 
of the Prince's visit, a seaman smiled down, as sea- 
men sometimes do, at a vivid little Newfoundland 
Flapper in a sunset-coloured jumper bodice, New 
York cut skirt, white stockings and white canvas 
boots. The Flapper looked up from her seat in the 
stern of her " gas " launch (gasolene equals petrol), 
and smiled back, as is the Flapper habit, and the sea- 
man promptly opened conversation by asking if the 
Flapper had seen the Prince. 

" You bet," said the Flapper. " He's a dandy 
boy. He's a plush." 

His Royal Highness became many things in his 
travels across America, but I think it ought to go 
down in history that at St. John's, Newfoundland, he 
became a " plush." 



2 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Newfoundland also introduced another Western 
phenomenon. It presented us to the race of false 
prophets whom we were to see go down in confusion 
all the way from St. John's to Victoria and back 
again to New York. 

Members of this race were plentiful in St. John's. 
As we spent our days before the Prince's arrival pick- 
ing up facts and examining the many beautiful arches 
of triumph that were being put up in the town, we 
were warned not to expect too much from New- 
foundland. St. John's had not its bump of enthusi- 
asm largely developed, we were told; its people were 
resolutely dour and we must not be disappointed if 
the Prince's reception lacked warmth. In all prob- 
ability the weather would conform to the general 
habit and be foggy. 

Here, as elsewhere, the prophets were confounded. 
St. John's proved second to none in the warmth of 
its affectionate greeting — that splendid spontaneous 
welcome which the whole West gave to the Prince 
upset all preconceived notions, swept away all sense 
of set ceremonial and made the tour from the begin- 
ning to the end the most happy progress of a sympa- 
thetic and responsive youth through a continent of 
intimate personal friends. 

II 

The Dauntless went out from St. John's on Sun- 
day, August 10, to rendezvous with Renown and 
Dragon, and the three great modern warships came 
together on a glorious Western evening. 

There was a touch of drama in the meeting. In 



Newfoundland 



the marvellous clear air of gold and blue that only 
the American Continent can show, we picked up 
Renown at a point when she was entering a long 
avenue of icebergs. There were eleven of these 
splendid white fellows in view on the skyline when we 
turned to lead the great battleship back to the an- 
chorage in Conception Bay, north of St. John's, and 
as the ships followed us it was as though the Prince 
had entered a processional way set with great pylons 
arranged deliberately to mark the last phase of his 
route to the Continent of the West. 

Some of these bergs were as large, as massive and 
as pinnacled as cathedrals, some were humped 
mounds that lifted sullenly from the radiant sea, 
some were treacherous little crags circled by rings of 
detached floes — the " growlers," those almost 
wholly submerged masses of ice that the sailor fears 
most. Most of the bergs in the two irregular lines 
were distant, and showed as patches of curiously lum- 
inant whiteness against the intense blue of the sky. 
Some were close enough for us to see the wonderful 
semi-transparent green of the cracks and fissures in 
their sides and the vivid emerald at the base that 
the bursting seas seemed to be eternally polishing 
anew. ( 

When Renown was sighted, a mere smudge on the 
horizon, we saw the flash of her guns and heard 
faintly the thud of the explosions. She was getting 
in some practice with her four-inch guns on the en- 
ticing targets of the bergs. 

We were too far away to see results, but we were 
told that as a spectacle the effect of the shell-bursts 



4 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

on the ice crags was remarkable. Under the explo- 
sions the immense masses of these translucent fairy 
islands rocked and changed shape. Faces of ice 
cliffs crumbled under the hits and sent down ava- 
lanches of ice into the furious green seas the shocks 
of the explosions had raised. 

This was one of the few incidents in a journey 
made under perfect weather conditions in a vessel 
that is one of the " wonder ships " of the British 
Navy. The huge Renown had behaved admirably 
throughout the passage. She had travelled at a 
slow speed, for her, most of the time, but there had 
been a spell of about an hour when she had worked 
up to the prodigious rate of thirty-one knots an hour. 
Under these test conditions she had travelled like an 
express with no more structural movement than is 
felt in a well-sprung Pullman carriage. 

The Prince had employed his five day's journey by 
indulging his fancy for getting to know how things 
are done. Each day he had spent two hours in a 
different part of the ship having its function and 
mechanism explained to him by the officer in charge. 

As he proved later in Canada when visiting vari- 
ous industrial and agricultural plants, His Royal 
Highness has the modern curiosity and interest for 
the mechanics of things. Indeed, throughout the 
journey he showed a distinct inclination towards peo- 
ple and the work that ordinary people did, rather 
than in the contemplation of views however splendid, 
and the report that he said at one time, " Oh, Lord, 
let's cut all this scenery and get back to towns and 
crowds," is certainly true in essence if not in fact. 



Newfoundland 



It was in the beautiful morning of August nth 
that the Prince made his first landfall in the West, 
and saw in the distance the great curtain of high rock 
that makes the grim coast-line of Newfoundland. 

For reasons of the Renown's tonnage he had to go 
into Conception Bay, one of the many great sacks of 
inlets that make the island something that resembles 
nothing so much as a section of a jig-saw puzzle. 
The harbour of St. John's could float Renown, but its 
narrow waters would not permit her to turn, and the 
Prince had to transfer his Staff and baggage to 
Dragon in order to complete the next stage of the 
voyage. 

Conception Bay is a fjord thrusting its way 
through the jaws of strong, sharp hills of red sand- 
stone piled up in broken and stratified masses above 
grey slate rock. On these hills cling forests of 
spruce and larch in woolly masses that march down 
the combes to the very water's edge. It is wild 
scenery, Scandinavian and picturesque. 

In the combes — the " outports " they are called 
— are the small, scattered villages of the fishermen. 
The wooden frame houses have the look of the pack- 
ing-case, and though they are bright and toy-like 
when their green or red or cinnamon paint is fresh, 
they are woefully drab when the weather of several 
years has had its way with them. 

In front of most of the houses are the " flakes," 
or drying platforms where the split cod is exposed to 
the air. These " flakes " are built up among the 
ledges and crevices of the rock, being supported by 
numberless legs of thin spruce mast; the effect of 



6 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

these spidery platforms, the painted houses, the 
sharp stratified red rock and the green massing of the 
trees is that of a Japanese vignette set down amid 
inappropriate scenery. 

Cod fishing is, of course, the beginning and the 
end of the life of many of these villages on the bays 
that indent so deeply the Newfoundland coast. It is 
not the adventurous fishing of the Grand Banks; 
there is no need for that. There is all the food and 
the income man needs in the crowded local waters. 
Men have only to go out in boats with hook and line 
to be sure of large catches. 

Only a few join the men who live farther to the 
south, about Cape Race, in their trips to the misty 
waters of the Grand Banks. Here they put off from 
their schooners in dories and make their haul with 
hook and line. 

A third branch of these fishers, particularly those 
to the north of St. John's, push up to the Labrador 
coast, where in the bays, or " fishing rooms," they 
catch, split, head, salt and dry the superabundant 
fish. 

By these methods vast quantities of cod and sal- 
mon are caught, and, as in the old days when the 
hardy fishermen of Devon, Brittany, Normandy and 
Portugal were the only workers in these little known 
seas, practically all the catch is shipped to England 
and France. During the war the cod fishers of New- 
foundland played a very useful part in mitigating 
the stringency of the British ration-cards, and there 
are hopes that this good work may be extended, and 
that by setting up a big refrigerating plant New- 



Newfoundland 



foundland may enlarge her market in Britain and 
the world. 

With the fishery goes the more dangerous calling 
of sealing. For this the men of Newfoundland set 
out in the winter and the spring to the fields of flat 
" pan " ice to hunt the seal schools. 

At times this means a march across the ice deserts 
for many days and the danger of being cut off by 
blizzards; when that happens no more news is heard 
of the adventurous hunters. 

Every few years Newfoundland writes down the 
loss of a ship's company of her too few young men, 
for Newfoundland, very little helped by immigra- 
tion, exists on her native born. " A crew every six 
or eight years, we reckon it that way," you are told. 
It is part of the hard life the Islanders lead, an ex- 
pected debit to place against the profits of the rich 
fur trade. 

Solidly blocking the heart of Conception Bay is a 
big island, the high and irregular outline of which 
seems to have been cut down sharply with a knife. 
This is Bell Island, which is not so much an island as 
a great, if accidental, iron mine. 

Years ago, when the island was merely the home 
of farmers and fishermen, a shipowner in need of 
easily handled ballast found that the subsoil con- 
tained just the thing he wanted. By turning up the 
thin surface he came upon a stratum of small, square 
slabs of rock rather like cakes of soap. These were 
easily lifted and easily carted to his ship. 

He initiated the habit of taking rock from Bell 
Island for ballast, and for years shipmasters loaded 



8 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

it up, to dump it overboard with just as much uncon- 
cern when they took their cargo inboard. It was 
some time before an inquiring mind saw something 
to attract it in the rock ballast; the rock was anal- 
yzed and found to contain iron. 

Turned into a profiteer by this astonishing dis- 
covery, the owner of the ground where the slabs were 
found clung tenaciously to his holding until he had 
forced the price up to the incredible figure of ioo 
dollars. He sold with the joyous satisfaction of a 
man making a shrewd deal. 

His ground has changed hands several times since, 
and the prices paid have advanced somewhat on his 
optimistic figure; for example, the present company 
bought it for two million dollars. 

The ore is not high grade, but is easily obtained, 
and so can be handled profitably. In the beginning 
it was only necessary to turn over the turf and take 
what was needed, the labour costing less than a 
shilling a ton. Now the mines strike down through 
the rock of the island beneath the sea, and the cost 
of handling is naturally greater. It is worth noting 
that prior to 19 14 practically all the output of this 
essentially British mine went to Germany; the war 
has changed that and now Canada takes the lion's 
share. 

It was under the cliffs of Bell. Island, near the 
point where the long lattice-steel conveyors bring 
the ore from the cliff-top to the water-level, that 
the three warships dropped anchor. As they 
swung on their cables blasting operations in the 
iron cliffs sent out the thud of their explosions and 



Newfoundland 9 

big columns of smoke and dust, for all the world as 
though a Royal salute was being fired in honour of 
the Prince's arrival. 



in 

During the day His Royal Highness went ashore 
informally, mainly to satisfy his craving for walking 
exercise. Before he did so, he received the British 
correspondents on board the Renown, and a few min- 
utes were spent chatting with him in the charming 
and spacious suite of rooms that Navy magic had 
erected with such efficiency that one had to convince 
oneself that one really was on a battleship and not in 
a hotel de luxe. 

We met a young man in a rather light grey lounge 
suit, whose boyish figure is thickening into the out- 
lines of manhood. I have heard him described as 
frail; and a Canadian girl called him " a little bit of 
a feller " in my hearing. But one has only to note 
an excellent pair of shoulders and the strength of his 
long body to understand how he can put in a twenty- 
hour day of unresting strenuosity in running, riding, 
walking and dancing without turning a hair. 

It is the neat, small features, the nose a little in- 
clined to tilt, a soft and almost girlish fairness of 
complexion, and the smooth and remarkable gold 
hair that give him the suggestion of extreme boyish- 
ness — these things and his nervousness. 

His nervousness is part of his naturalness and lack 
of poise. It showed itself then, and always, in char- 
acteristic gestures, a tugging at the tie, the smooth- 



io Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ing-down of the hair with the flat of the hand, the 
furious digging of fists into pockets, a clutching at 
coat lapels, and a touch of hesitance before he speaks. 

He comes at you with a sort of impulsive friendli- 
ness, his body hitched a little sideways by the nerv- 
ous drag of a leg. His grip is a good one; he meets 
your eyes squarely in a long glance to which the dark- 
ness about his eyes adds intensity, as though he is 
getting your features into his memory for all time, 
in the resolve to keep you as a friend. 

He speaks well, with an attractive manner and a 
clear enunciation that not even acute nervousness can 
slur or disorganize. He is, in fact, an excellent pub- 
lic speaker, never missing the value of a sentence, 
and managing his voice so well that even in the open 
air people are able to follow what he says at a dis- 
tance that renders other speakers inaudible. 

In private he is as clear, but more impulsive. He 
makes little darting interjections which seem part of 
a similar movement of hands, or the whole of the 
body, and he speaks with eagerness, as though he 
found most things jolly and worth while, and expects 
you do too. Obviously he finds zest in ordinary 
human things, and not a little humour, also, for there 
is more often than not a twinkle in his eyes that gives 
character to his friendly smile — that extraordin- 
arily ready smile, which comes so spontaneously and 
delightfully, and which became a byword over the 
whole continent of the West. 

It is this friendly and unstudied manner that wins 
him so much affection. It makes all feel immedi- 
ately that he is extraordinarily human and extraordi- 



Newfoundland 1 1 

narily responsive, and that there are no barriers or 
reticences in intercouse with him. 

He is not an intellectual, and he certainly is not a 
dullard. He rather fills the average of the youth of 
modern times, with an extreme fondness for modern 
activities, which include golfing, running and walk- 
ing; jazz music and jazz dancing (when the pretti- 
ness of partners is by no means a deterrent), sight- 
seeing and the rest, and my own impression is, that 
he is much more at home in the midst of a hearty 
crowd — the more democratic the better — than in 
the most august of formal gatherings. 

The latter, too, means speech-making, and he has, 
I fancy, a young man's loathing of making speeches. 
He makes them — on certain occasions he had to 
make them three times and more a day — and he 
makes good ones, but he would rather, I think, hold 
an open reception where Tom, Dick, Vera, Phyllis 
and Harry crowded about him in a democratic mob 
to shake his hand. 

Yet though he does not like speech-making, he 
showed from the beginning that he meant to master 
the repugnant art. To read speeches, as he did in 
the early days of the tour, was not good enough. 
He schooled himself steadily to deliver them without 
manuscript, so that by the end of the trip he was able 
to deliver a long and important speech — such as 
that at Massey Hall, Toronto, on November 4 — 
practically without referring to his notes. 

During his day in Conception Bay, the Prince went 
ashore and spent some time amid the beautiful 
scenery of rocky, spruce-clad hills and valleys, where 



12 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the forests and the many rocky streams give earnest 
of the fine sport in game and fish for which New- 
foundland is famous. 

The crews of the battleships went ashore, also, to 
the scattered little hamlet of Topsail, lured there, 
perhaps, by the legend that Topsail is called the 
Brighton of Newfoundland. It is certainly a pretty 
place, with its brightly painted, deep-porched wooden 
houses set amid the trees in that rugged country, but 
the inhabitants were led astray by local pride when 
they dragged in Brighton. The local " Old Ship M 
is the grocer's, who also happened to be the Self- 
ridge's of the hamlet, and his good red wine or 
brown ale, or whatever is yours, is Root Beer! 

For many of the battleships' crews it was the first 
impact with the Country of the Dry, and the shock 
was profound. 

" I was ashore five hours, waiting for the blinkin' 
liberty boat to come and take me off," said one sea- 
man, in disgust. " Five hours ! And all I had was 
a water — and that was warm." 



IV 

On Tuesday, August 12, the Prince transferred to 
Dragon and in company with Dauntless steamed 
towards St. John's, along the grim, sheer coast of 
Newfoundland, where squared promontories stand- 
ing out like buttresses give the impression that they 
are bastions set in the wall of a castle built by giants. 

The gateway to St. John's harbour is a mere sally- 
port in that castle wall. It is an abrupt opening, 



Newfoundland 13 

and is entered through the high and commanding 
posts of Signal and the lighthouse hills. 

One can conceive St. John's as the ideal pirate lair 
of a romance-maker of the Stevensonian tradition, 
and one can understand it appealing to the bold, free- 
booting instincts of the first daring settlers. A ring 
of rough, stratified hills grips the harbour water 
about, sheltering it from storms and land enemies, 
while with the strong hills at the water-gate to com- 
mand it, and a chain drawn across its Narrows, it 
was safe from incursion of water-borne foes. 

It was the fitting stronghold of the reckless Devon, 
Irish and Scots fishermen who followed Cabot to the 
old Norse Helluland, the " Land of Naked Rocks," 
and who vied and fought with, and at length ruled 
with the rough justice of the " Fishing Admirals " 
the races of Biscayan and Portuguese men who made 
the island not a home but a centre of the great cod 
fishery that supplied Europe. 

St. John's has laboured under its disadvantages 
ever since those - days. The town has been pinched 
between the steep hills, and forced to straggle back 
for miles along the harbour inlet. On the southern 
side of the basin the slope has beaten the builder, 
and on the dominant green hill, through the grass of 
which thrusts grey and red-brown masses of the 
sharp-angled rock stratum, there are very few houses. 

On the north, humanity has made a fight for it, 
and the white, dusty roads struggle with an almost 
visible effort up the heavy grade of the hill until they 
attain the summit. The effect is of a terraced and 
piled-up city, straggling in haphazard fashion up to 



14 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the point where the great Roman Catholic cathedral, 
square-hewn and twin-towered, crowns the mass of 
the town. 

Plank frame houses, their paint dingy and grey, 
with stone and brick buildings, jostle each other on 
the hill-side streets, innocent of sidewalks. The 
main thoroughfare, Water Street, which runs paral- 
lel with the harbour and the rather casual wharves, is 
badly laid, and given to an excess of mud in wet 
weather, mud that the single-deck electric trams on 
their bumpy track distribute lavishly. The black 
pine masts that serve as telegraph-poles are set 
squarely and frequently in the street, and overhead is 
the heavy mesh of cables and wires that forms an es- 
sential part of all civic scenery in the West. The 
buildings and shops along this street are not impos- 
ing, and there seems a need for revitalization in the 
town, either through a keener overseas trading and 
added shipping facilities, or a broader and more en- 
couraging local policy. 

Most of the goods for sale were American, and 
some of them not the best type of American articles 
at that. It was hard to find indications of British 
trading, and it seemed to me that here was a field 
for British enterprise, and that with the easing of 
shipping difficulties, which were then tying up New- 
foundland's commerce, Britain and Newfoundland 
would both benefit by a vigorous trade policy. New- 
foundlanders seemed anxious to get British goods, 
and, as they pointed out, the rate of exchange was 
all in their favour. 

Through Water Street passes a medley of vehicles; 



Newfoundland 15 

the bumpy electric trams, horse carts that look like 
those tent poles the Indians trail behind them put on 
wheels, spidery buggies, or " rigs," solid-wheeled 
country carts, and the latest makes in automobiles. 

The automobiles astonish one, both in their in- 
ordinate number and their up-to-dateness. There 
seemed, if anything, too many cars for the town, but 
then that was only because we are new to the West- 
ern Continent, where the automobile is as everyday 
a thing as the telephone. All the cars are American, 
and to the Newfoundlander they are things of pride, 
since they show how the modern spirit of the Colony 
triumphs over sea freight and heavy import duty. 
Motor-cars and electric lighting in a lavish fashion 
that Britain does not know, form the modern feat- 
ures of St. John's. 

When the two warships steamed through the Nar- 
rows into the harbour, St. John's, within its hills, 
was looking its best under radiant sunlight. The 
fishermen's huts clinging to the rocky crevices of the 
harbour entrance on thousands of spidery legs, let 
crackers off to the passing ships and fluttered a mist 
of flags. Flags shone with vivid splashes of pigment 
from the water's edge, where a great five-masted 
schooner, barques engaged in the South American 
trade, a liner and a score of vessels had dressed ships, 
up all the tiers of houses to where strings of flags 
swung between the towers of the cathedral. 

From the wharves a number of gnat-like gasolene 
launches, gay with flags, pushed off to flutter about 
both cruisers until they came to anchor. From one 
of the quays signal guns were fired, and the brazen 



16 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

and inordinate hangings of his Royal salute echoed 
and re-echoed in uncanny fashion among the hills 
that hem the town, so that when the warships joined 
in, the whole cup of the harbour was filled with the 
hammerings of explosions overlapping explosions, 
until the air seemed made of nothing else. 

On the big stacks of Newfoundland lumber at the 
harbour-side, on the quays, on the freight sheds and 
on the roofs of buildings, Newfoundland people, 
who, like the weather, were giving the lie to the 
prophets, crowded to see the Prince arrive. He 
came from Dragon in the Royal barge in the wake 
of the Dauntless* launch, which was having a wor- 
ried moment in " shooing " off the eager gasolene 
boats, crowding in, in defiance of all regulations, to 
get a good view. 

There was no doubt about the warmth of the wel- 
come. It was a characteristic Newfoundland crowd. 
Teamsters in working overalls, fishermen in great sea 
boots and oilskins, girls garbed in the smartness of 
New York, whose comely faces and beautiful com- 
plexions were of Ireland, though there was here and 
there a flash of French blood in the grace of their 
youth, little boys willing to defy the law and climb 
railings in order to get a " close up " photograph, 
youths in bubble-toed boots — all proved that their 
dourness was not an emotion for state occasions, and 
that they could s'how themselves as they really were, 
as generous and as loyal as any people within the 
Empire. 

The Prince was received on the jetty by the Gov- 
ernor and the members of the legislature. With 



Newfoundland 17 

them was a guard of honour of seamen, all of them 
Newfoundland fishermen who had served in various 
British warships throughout the war. There was a 
contingent from the Newfoundland Regiment also, 
stocky men who had fought magnificently through 
the grim battles in France, and on the Somme had 
done so excellently that the name of their greatest 
battle, Gueudecourt, has become part of the Colony's 
everyday history, and is to be found inscribed on the 
postage stamps under the picture of the caribou 
which is the national emblem. 

The Prince's passage through the streets was a 
stirring one. There were no soldiers guarding the 
route through Water Street and up the high, steep 
hills to Government House, and the eager crowd 
pressed about the carriage in such ardour that its 
pace had to be slowed to a walk. At that pace it 
moved through the streets, a greater portion of the 
active population keeping pace with it, turning them- 
selves into a guard of honour, walking as the horses 
walked, and, if they did break into a trot, trotting 
with them. 

The route lay under many really beautiful arches, 
some castles with towers and machicolations sheafed 
in the sweet-smelling spruce; others constructed en- 
tirely from fish boxes and barrels, with men on them, 
working and packing the cod; others were hung with 
the splendid fur, feathers and antlers of Newfound- 
land hunting. 

Through that day and until midday of the next, 
lively crowds followed every movement of the 
" dandy feller," swopping opinions as to his charm, 



18 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

and his smile, his youthfulness and his shyness. 
They compared him with his grandfather who had 
visited St. John's fifty-nine years ago, and made a 
point of mentioning that he was to sleep in the very 
bedroom his grandfather had used. 

There was the usual heavy program, an official 
lunch, the review of war veterans, a visit to the 
streets when the lavish electric light had been 
switched into the beautiful illuminations, when the 
two cruisers were mirrored in the harbour waters in 
an outline of electric lights, and when on the ring 
of hill-tops red beacons were flaring in his honour. 
There was a dance, with his lucky partners sure of 
photographic fame in the local papers of tomorrow, 
and then in the morning, medal giving, a peep at the 
annual regatta, famous in local history, on lovely 
•Quidividi Lake among the hills, and then, all too 
soon for Newfoundland, his departure to New 
Brunswick. 

There was no doubt at all as to the impression he 
made. The visit that might have been formal was 
in actuality an affair of spontaneous affection. 
There was a friendliness and warmth in the welcome 
that quite defies description. His own unaffected 
pleasure in the greeting; his eagerness to meet every- 
body, not the few, but the ordinary, everyday people 
as much as the notabilities, his lack of affectation, and 
his obvious enjoyment of all that was happening, 
placed the Prince and the people, welcoming him, 
immediately on a footing of intimacy. His tour had 
begun in the air of triumph which we were to find 
everywhere in his passage across the Continent. 



CHAPTER II 

ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK 



WHEN one talks to a citizen of St. John, 
New Brunswick, one has an impression 
that his city is burnt down every half 
century or so in order that he and his neighbours 
might build it up very much better. 

This is no doubt an inaccurate impression, but 
when I had listened to various brisk people telling 
me about the fires — the devastating one of 1877, 
and the minor ones of a variety of dates — and the 
improvements St. John has been able to accomplish 
after them; and when I had seen the city itself, I 
must confess I had a sneaking feeling that Providence 
had deliberately managed these things so that a 
lively, vigorous and up-to-date folk should have 
every opportunity of reconstructing their city accord- 
ing to the modernity of their minds and status. 

The vigorousness of St. John is so definite that it 
got into our bones though our visit was but one of 
hours. St. John, for us, represented an extraordi- 
nary hustle. We arrived on the morning of Friday, 
August 15, after the one night when the sea had not 
been altogether our friend; when the going had been 
"awfully kinky" (as the seasick one of our party 
put it), and the spiral motif in the Dauntless' ward- 
room had been disturbing at meals. 

19 



20 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

We arrived, moreover, on a wet day, were 
whisked by launch to the quayside and plunged at 
once into the company of the Governor-General, 
Prime Minister, Canadian legislators, Guards of 
Honour, brigades of " movie " men, crowds of sing- 
ing children and Canada in the mass determined to 
make the most of the moment. From this we were 
hurled headlong in the Canadian manner, in cars 
through streets of more people and more children 
to functions where the whole breezy business was 
repeated again with infinite zest. 

It was the day of our first impact with the novelty 
and bigness of Canada, and it was a trifle dizzying. 
It was a day on which we encountered so much that 
was new, and yet it was a day done in the " movie " 
manner, with all the sensations definite but digested 
in a hurry. 

It was the day on which we first encountered the 
big Canadian crowd; that hearty, democratic 
crowd, so scornful of routine and policemen and 
methods of decorum, yet so generous in its feeling, 
so good-natured and so entirely reliable in its sense 
of self-discipline. 

It was the day when we gathered our first impres- 
sions of Canadian city life, saw (and perhaps we 
found them a little unexpected) Canada's fine shops 
and the beautiful things in them, saw Canada's beau- 
tiful women and the smart clothes they wore, saw the 
evidence of the modernity of Canada's business 
methods, and the comeliness of the suburbs in which 
Canada lived. 

It was the day when we first encountered a Cana- 



St. John, New Brunswick 21 

dian meal, glanced with awe at those marble mosaic 
temples of the head, the barbers' shops, looked into 
our first Shoe Shine Parlour, fell under the seduc- 
tion of our first Canadian ice, and finally surrendered 
ourselves to the infinite and efficient comfort of a 
Canadian Railway. 

All this was accomplished allegro di molto. We 
had to assimilate it all in a bunch of hurried hours 
between our first landing and the collecting and 
stowing of our suitcases in the sleeping car of the 
National Railway Special that had been placed at 
the service of the newspaper men. It was a crowded 
day, but it was thrilling and it remains unforgettable. 



11 

St. John, New Brunswick, is many things. It is 
the historic spot where that splendid figure in 
Canada's story, the great Champlain, and De Monts, 
came in the dim days of the West's beginning, to rear 
a new city in a new wild continent, and called it after 
the saint on whose day they first made their land- 
ing. 

It is commerce if that is the way you look at 
things; an ice-free port, tingling with every modern 
activity, where lumber and grain and fruit and all 
the riches of Canada are swung to Europe and the 
West Indies, and scores of ports about the world, 
and where, when winter grips the immense St. Law- 
rence, passengers can slip, free of the ice, to the 
ocean tracts. 

It is the gate of pleasure. The entry port where 



22 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the sportsman and the holiday maker from America 
<or Europe can start for the fine fishing streams, 
where salmon and trout are kings; for the spruce 
forests, where moose and caribou, deer and even 
bear can be shot, and where wild duck and the 
Canadian partridge — which is really grouse — are 
commonplace; or to the many fine holiday towns of 
the maritime provinces, where golf and good scenery 
go hand in hand. 

It is romance. Here was one of the wrestling- 
points where France fought Britain for the suprem- 
acy of the Americas; where, even, France fought 
France, as one adventurer strove to wrest the riches 
of the fur trade from another. Somewhere on one 
of the ridgy shoulders of its grey-rock peninsula the 
wife of De Monts, in (his absence, held the fort 
against Charnisay, only to have her garrison mas- 
sacred before her eyes, when on promise of honour- 
able terms, she opened her gates. Somewhere on 
another gruff shoulder of the rock was the fort that 
Charnisay built from the ruins of the first, and 
where De Monts ultimately came into his own again 
by marrying his conqueror's widow. 

At the wharves of St. John to-day lie the ships 
that are heirs to the Boston clippers, links in a past 
of tragedy and trade, when New England men did 
business or battle across the waters of Fundy Bay, 
first as Englishmen with the French and then as 
independent Americans with the English. 

It was these English, the United Loyalists, who 
came out of America in 1783, during the War of 
Independence, or who were forced to come out later, 



St. John, New Brunswick 23 

p^ ■— ■ 11 .— — — ~« 

who really founded St. John as it stands to-day. 
And it was the Loyalists with their courage, tena- 
city, and virility who, with the sturdy French settlers 
of the old regime, built up the fortune and the spirit 
of St. John as it exists now. 

It is a city of quality. It has a vivid air of attrac- 
tiveness and prosperity. It is history and romance 
rounded off with the grain elevator. 



HI 

St. John, on August 15, was perfectly aware of the 
office it had to fulfil. It was on its quays that the 
Prince was first to set foot on Canadian soil, and St. 
John had made up its mind that that occasion should 
be handled in a befitting manner. 

True, it did not manage its weather quite so neatly 
as St. John's, Newfoundland, but on the other hand 
it refused to allow the rain to interfere with its plans 
or with its warmth of welcome. 

The entrance of the two light cruisers from the 
drenched, brown-grey Bay of Fundy, past the rather 
militaristic looking Partridge Island, was the signal 
for immediate attention. 

The inevitable motor launches came out by scores, 
and with them high-backed tugs; launches and tugs 
were covered with flags and people bearing flags, 
both flags and people being damp but enthusiastic. 

The long harbour itself gives a sense of pit-like 
depth. Not only are the black quay walls extremely 
high, to accommodate a tide that has a drop of 
twenty-five feet, but on the quays themselves are 



24 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

piled immense grain elevators, with " Welcome " 
written in giant letters on their towering sides, coal- 
loading sheds with their lattice derrick arms that 
always seem to have been constructed by Mr. Wells's 
Martians, and great freight buildings. 

Round this huge, black amphitheatre of welcome, 
on whose sea-floor was the Dragon and ourselves, 
people collected thickly, and everywhere there was 
the glint of flags through the rain. 

But even the crowds about the harbour did not 
give a hint of the vast throng waiting on the land- 
ing-stage. Hidden away from the water by sheds, 
this very cheery crush filled the wide, free space of 
the harbour approach. Their numbers and eager- 
ness had already proved the mutability of the police 
force, and volunteers in khaki were enrolled by the 
score in order to keep them back. 

Almost as imposing as the throng were the photo- 
graphers; not a few photographers, but a battalion 
of them, running about with that feverish energy 
Press-photographers alone possess, and climbing on 
to walls and roofs as though impelled by some divine, 
inner instinct towards positions from which the 
Prince of Wales could be shown to the world at 
unique and astounding angles. 

Movie men and " stills " men, the former the real 
workers of the world, for they carry their heavy 
machines with all the energy of Lewis gunners, 
nipped about, formed in groups ready to shoot 
notabilities, mixed themselves up in the guard of 
honour until chased away by sergeants, and in the 
end forming up in a solid phalanx that almost ob- 



St. John, New Brunswick 25 

literated Canada, to snap His Royal Highness as he 
came up the covered way from the wharf. 

He had been received on the wharf by the Gover- 
nor-General of Canada, the Duke of Devonshire, a 
heavy figure, whose very top hat seemed to have an 
air of brooding meditation in keeping with his per- 
sonality; the Premier of Canada, Sir Robert Bor- 
den, an individuality of almost active reticence, a 
man who somehow seemed to get all the mass and 
weight of Canada into a mere "How d'y' do?" 
And with these were many of the leaders, political, 
commercial and social, of the Dominion, come to- 
gether to join in Canada's first greeting. 

It was raining, but there was no dampening that 
magnificent welcome. The meeting with Dominion 
leaders down by the waterside had been formal. 
The meeting between the Prince and the mass of 
people in the big, open space was the real welcome. 
Here, as in every other town in the Dominion, the 
formal side of the visit was entirely swamped by the 
human. The people themselves made this welcome 
splendid and overwhelming, elevating it to that 
plane of intimacy and affection that made the 
tour different from anything that had been conceived 
before. 

After facing this superb welcome, which obviously 
moved him a great deal, the Prince passed to an- 
other side of the square, to where St. John had 
added a touch of youth, prettiness and novelty to 
the loyalty of her greeting. 

In a big stand there were massed several thou- 
sand school children, all of them in white, all of them 



26 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

carrying small flags, all of them thoroughly wet, and 
all of them enthusiastic beyond discipline. 

They had carried the first outburst of cheering 
well beyond the capacity of mere adult lungs and 
endurance, and as they cheered without break, they 
waved their flags, so that the whole stand seemed 
a big fire, over which a multitude of tiny red, white 
and blue flames unceasingly played. This mass flag- 
wagging is a great feature of Western welcomes, 
and a most effective one. It enables the hands to 
join in an enthusiasm which the Canadian does not 
seem to be sufficiently able to express by his cheering 
and whistling. Really ardent Canadians put a rattle 
into their empty left hands, and express their joy 
of welcome with the maximum of noise as well as 
activity. 

Only on the approach of His Royal Highness did 
these delightful children staunch their cheering, and 
that merely because they wanted their lungs to sing. 

They transferred their enthusiasm into their songs. 
Their sharp, high singing, with a touch of the nasal 
in it, and a Canadian accenting of " r's," introduced 
us to the splendid and inevitable hymns — begin- 
ning with " O Canada " and ending with " God 
Bless the Prince of Wales " — that we were to hear 
across the breadth of the Dominion and back again. 

On the stage below this great flower-box of infants 
was a number of girls; each of them, it seemed, a 
princess of her race, having the wonderful poise, the 
fine skin, and the bright comeliness that make Cana- 
dian women so individual in their beauty. 

These girls wore bright, symbolical dresses, and 



St John, New Brunswick 27 

each carried a shield bearing the arms and the name 
of the province of the Dominion of Canada she 
represented. It was a pageant of greeting in which, 
advancing in pairs, all the provinces the Prince was 
to visit in the next few months came forward to 
bid him welcome at the moment he set foot in the 
Dominion. 

Curtsying to the Prince, the girls fell back and 
formed a most attractive tableau. It was a delight- 
ful picture, delightfully carried out, and there was 
no doubt about the Prince's pleasure. 

While His Royal Highness witnessed this 
spectacle and listened to the singing of the kiddies, 
the crowd, vanquishing police and boy scouts and 
khaki, flooded over the open space and gathered 
about him. It was a scene we were to see repeated 
almost daily during the trip. 

Without police protection, and, what is more, 
without needing it, the Prince stood in the centre of 
a homely crowd, rubbing shoulders with it, becom- 
ing an almost indistinguishable part of it, save for the 
fact that its various members found it an opportunity 
to shake hands with him. 

It was a state of things a trifle strange to Britons. 
It would probably have seemed little less than an- 
archy to a chief of British police, yet one was im- 
mensely impressed by it. It had all the intimacy of 
a gathering of friends. And the Prince was as na- 
tural a part of that genial and informal crowd as any 
Canadian. 

The crowd shared his amusement at the strenuous 
work of the camera men, who wormed their way 



28 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

through the masses of people with their terrible 
earnestness, dogged his steps whenever he ventured 
to move a yard, and who seemed to feel that the 
reason he stopped to make speeches was that they 
should be able to get a steady, three-quarter face 
snap of him at a distance of two feet. 

When the Prince slyly hinted to a photographer 
that, really, the most important and newsy part of 
the function was the massed battalion of camera 
men, and that actually they were the people who 
should be photographed and not him, the crowd 
shared the joke with him. 

Prince and people were all part of one democracy, 
the real democracy that never thinks about democ- 
racy, but simply acts humanly and naturally in hu- 
man and natural affairs. 

" He'll do," said one man. " Why — he's just a 
Canadian after all." 



IV 

The city had made itself attractive for the coming 
of the Prince. In the fine and broad King Street 
up which he drove to fulfil the many functions of the 
day, the handsome commercial buildings were bright 
with flags and hung with the spruce branches that 
individualize Canadian decorations. Turreted 
arches of spruce, and banners of welcome strung 
right across the street, entered into the scheme. 

King Street is a brave avenue sweeping up hill 
from the very edge of the harbour water. Here the 
Market Slip, the old landing-place of the Loyalists, 



St. John, New Brunswick 29 

r ' " ' " ' ■ ' : ' - *"«' • r 

thrusts into the very heart of the city and brings the 
shipping to the front doors of the houses. In the 
big triangular space about it gather the carters with 
their " slovens," curious square carts, hung so low 
that their floor boa»rds are but a few inches from the 
ground. 

In King Street one can see the life and novelty of 
the town. In it are the hotels, in the vast windows 
of which people, involved in the ritual of chewing 
gum, sit as though on a verandah, and contemplate 
the passing world — it is a solemn moment, that 
first encounter through plate glass, of a row of 
Buddhas, with gently^moving jaws. Although most 
Canadian cities boast big hotels of modern type, the 
old type, with the big windows, are everywhere, to 
lend a peculiar individuality to the streets. 

In King Street are the smart shops, showing 
jewellery, furs, millinery and the rest, of a design 
and quality equal to anything in London and New 
York. The Canadians have a particular passion for 
silver of good design, and the display in the shops is 
a thing that impresses. 

Here, too, are the Boot-Shine Parlours, the Candy 
Stores, the temples of the Barbers, and those won- 
drous purveyors of universal trivia, the Drug Stores. 

In America, boot (only it is called a shoe) shining 
is a special rite, and it is performed outside the home 
in a " Parlour." These Parlours are often elab- 
orate affairs, attached to a tobacconist, or to the 
vendor of American magazines, who is also a tobac- 
conist; but quite frequently they exist alone on their 
own profits. In these Parlours, and in an armchair 



30 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

* ,m 

on a raised throne, one sits while an expert with 
brushes, polish, rags and secret varnishes, performs 
miracles on one's shoes. It is an art that justifies 
itself, but the fact that so many Canadian roads off 
the main streets are mere strips of dusty unmetalled 
nature explains the necessity of so many shops de- 
voted to this business; that, and the dearth and in- 
dependence of servants. 

The Candy Stores are bright and elaborate places 
also. There are so many of them, and their wares 
are so ingenious and varied, that one almost fancies 
that eating candy is one of the national industries. 
All candy stores have an ice cream soda section, 
where cream ices of an amazing virtuosity and num- 
ber, and called, for some reason I have not dis- 
covered, " Sundaes," can be had. 

The Drug Stores have an ice cream section, al- 
ways; small and pretty ante-rooms, with a chintz air 
and chintz chairs, where these delightful ices, com- 
pounded of cream and all kinds of fruits or syrups, 
and dubbed with romantic names, such as " Angel's 
Sigh," and " Over the Top," are absorbed by citi- 
zens with a regularity that seems to point to a de- 
finite racial impulse. 

One expects to find an ice cream counter in a drug 
store, because one comes to realize that there is 
little within the range of human possibility that the 
drug store does not sell. It sells soap and tooth- 
paste and drugs, as one would expect; it sells maga- 
zines and fountain-pens and ink, cameras and clocks. 
It sells sweets and walking-sticks and postage stamps 
and stationery. It sells everything. It even sells 



SL John, New Brunswick 31 

whiskey. It is, indeed, the only place in the Conti- 
nent of the Dry where spirits of any sort can be ob- 
tained, not freely, of course, but through the full 
ceremonial of the law, and by means of a doctor's 
certificate. 

And then the Barbers' Temples. When I talk of 
barbers' shops as temples, I speak with the feeling 
of awe these austere and airy places of whiteness and 
marble, glass and mosaic, silver and electricity im- 
pressed me. There seems to be something measured 
and profound in the way the Canadian goes to these 
conventicles, in the frequency of his going, and in 
the solemnity of the act that he undergoes when 
there. 

There are so many of these shops, and they are 
always so crowded that it seems to me the Canadian 
makes his attendance on the barber, not an accident, 
but a solemn habit; an occasion with not a little ritual 
in it. And the barber has the same air. 

When a Canadian puts the top of himself into the 
hands of the barber, he gets, not a hair-cutting, but 
a process. He is placed in a chair of leather and 
electro-plate, standing well out to the middle of a 
pure white floor. As a chair it is the kindlier 
brother of the one the dentist uses; it has all the 
tips, tilts and abrupt upheavals, but none of the 
other's exactions. 

It is tipped and tilted and swung hither and thither 
by a white-vested priest as he goes austerely step 
by step through a definite service of the head. It is 
an intricate formulary that includes the close crop- 
ping of the temples, shaving behind the ears, shaving 



32 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the back of the neck (unless you show you belong to 
a feebler stock, and protest), swathing the head 
in hot towels, oil shampooing, massaging, " violet 
raying " and an entire orchestration of other 
methods of making the hair worthy. 

And the barber is not a mere human being with 
clippers. He is a hierophant with a touch of dog- 
matic infallibility. He does not suggest, " Would 
you like a scalping massage, sir? I recommend it. 
. . ." and so on; he tells you out of the calm cloud 
of his reticence: " I'm going to give you a Marsh- 
wort Electrolysis, and after that Yellow Cross 
Douch for that nasty nap in your hair." 

It takes a strong-willed fellow to say " No " to 
that attack of assertion, especially as you feel that 
you are shattering the entire tradition of Canada, 
where the whole elaborate process is just an ordi- 
nary hair-cut. 

The barber does not stop at the head, either. At 
the slightest weakness on your part, he beckons from 
one of his — well — side chapels, a brisk and im- 
perturbable manicurist. There are manicurists in 
all barbers' shops. Like the barbers, they are artists 
in their cult, and while he works on the head the 
manicurist accomplishes miracles of perfection on the 
nails, with scented baths, hot swathings, unguents, 
steel weapons and orange sticks. 

And while these things are occurring to you, you 
can have a Shoe Shine pundit from another corner, 
and I daresay you can have a chiropodist at the 
same time, so that for twenty minutes there is going 
on about your body a feverish concentration of ac- 



St. John, New Brunswick 33 

tivity that makes even Henry Ford's assembling de- 
partment look spiritless. 

King Street sweeps broadly uphill to King Square, 
which is a large and pleasant garden, merging im- 
perceptibly into the old graveyard, the grey old 
headstones of which add serenity to the charm of 
the park. 

The Square itself seems to be the Harley Street 
of St. John, for among the big buildings, and the 
" apartment " blocks, which are really flats, I came 
upon the plates of many doctors, who, in the un- 
expected American manner, add their special quali- 
fications under their name, so that I read: 

" Dr. John X , 



Throat, Ear and Nose.' 

The streets of St. John lead out at right-angles 
from this central group of square and street, for this 
is the West, where the parallel road-making of effi- 
cient town-planning reigns. Some of these streets 
are carved out of the grim, grey, slaty rock, that 
even now crops out in the midst of the stone and 
brick and wood of human effort, to show upon what 
stubborn stuff the first founders had to build. 

In the residential streets, and particularly in the 
suburbs, the homes are planned charmingly. The 
houses are of brick or wood, most of them built in 
the Colonial style, and all pleasantly gabled, and of 
a bright and attractive colour, while every one has 
the deep and comely porch, upon which are scattered 
rocking and easy chairs, and even settees. 



34 Westward with the Frince of Wales 

The houses are surrounded by the greenest lawns, 
and these lawns are not marred by walls or fences, 
but run right down to the curb, with but a strip of 
sidewalk for pedestrians. This elimination of rail- 
ings is a thing that might well be imitated in our 
country; it gives the residential districts a pretty and 
park-like air that is altogether delightful. 

We passed through miles of such homes in a 
journey round the deep bay of the harbour to the 
place where the Dauntless, dwarfed by the high 
lock walls, lay alongside the quay. There is a steam 
ferry connecting the two peninsulas that landlock 
the harbour, but our automobile driver, no doubt, 
had the civic spirit and wanted to show us both the 
beauties of suburban St. John, the great cantilever 
bridge across the St. John river and the famous 
Reversible Falls. 

The Reversible Falls are at the mouth of the St. 
John river, where it pushes through the high lime- 
stone cliffs into the harbour. At low tide there is 
the authentic fall, as the river cascades over the 
rock in a drop of fifteen feet, but the extraordinarily 
tide of the Bay of Fundy, rising ten feet above the 
river level, actually reverses things, and forces back 
the flood along the channel with some turbulence. 

Our journey to the Dauntless was for the melan- 
choly business of collecting our luggage. It was 
here we left the cheery comfort of the ward room 
for the definite adventure by railway across the 
Continent. Our miraculously erected cabins, the 
one amidships, and the two that sat snugly in the 
aeroplane hangar beneath the bridge, and kept com- 



St. John, New Brunswick 35 

pany with the song of the siren on foggy nights, 
were needed to accommodate the Canadians who 
were to accompany the Prince by sea to Halifax, 
then on to Prince Edward Island, and finally up the 
St. Lawrence to Quebec. 

It was a reluctant farewell to a ship we had found 
so companionable and keen. But there was a ray 
of comfort when the baggage master at the Canadian 
Railway " Dee-po " handed us a little bundle of lug- 
gage checks for the mixed assortment of trunks and 
bags we had dumped into his room. 

It had been an endless pile of luggage, and we 
apologized for it, and continued to say, " There's 
another piece, or two, or more, outside on the 
sloven. . . ." 

But the length of that luggage queue did not dis- 
tmay the baggage master. He counted the big pieces 
calmly, fixed a little tag on each piece, tore off half 
of each tag and presented it to us. 

" Through to Halifax," he said dispassionately. 

" We'll be along this evening, when the special 
comes in, to look after it " 

" Look after it in the baggage-room at Halifax," 
he said, without excitement. 

" It'll be all right? " we asked, in our English 
way. 

" It's checked through to Halifax," he insisted 
evenly, as though that explained everything, which, 
of course, it did. 

" And our suit-cases over there? We want them 
on the train." 

" They'll be on the train," he told us, with his 



36 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

splendid calm. " Your car porter will take them on 
the train." 

" We'll want them for tonight, so we don't want 
anything to go astray, you know." 

" They'll be under the seats of your section, wait- 
ing for you tonight. The porter will see to that." 

It was only then that we realized that we had 
been taken under control by Canadian Railways, 
and that the business of Canadian Railways is to 
make that control thorough, and to eliminate all 
worries, of which baggage is the worst, for their 
passengers from the outset to the end of the journey. 

Our baggage being checked through to Halifax, 
awaited our arrival serenely at Halifax. If it had 
been checked through to Vancouver or Japan, it 
would have awaited our arrival with equal certainty. 
Our suit-cases were under our seats when we arrived 
at the car. 

Canadian railways do not let passengers down on 
little everyday details like that. 



CHAPTER III 

ON THE TRAIN BETWEEN ST. JOHN AND 
HALIFAX 

I 

NEXT morning in the train we were 
awakened to an unexpected Sunday. It 
was not an ordinary calm Sunday, but a 
Sunday with a hustle on, a Canadian Sunday. 
There was no doubt about the bells, though they 
were ringing with remarkable earnestness in their 
efforts to get Canadians into church. 

Lying in our sleeping sections, we were bewildered 
by the bells, and by the fact that by human calendar 
the day should be Saturday. Then we raised the 
little blinds that hung between our modesty and a 
world of passing platforms, and found that we were 
in a junction (probably Truro), with a very Satur- 
day air, and that the church bells were on engines. 

It takes some time for the Briton to become ac- 
customed to the strangeness of bells on engines, and 
the fact, that, instead of whistling, the engines also 
give a very lifelike imitation of a liner's siren. The 
bells are tolled when entering a station, or approach- 
ing a level crossing, and so on, and the siren note 
is, I think, a real improvement on the ear-splitting 
whistle that harrows us in England. 

Our first night on the Canadian National had been 

37 



38 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

a prophecy of the many comfortable nights we were 
to spend on Canadian railways. We had been given 
an ordinary sleeping car of the long-distance service, 
but as we had it to our masculine selves, the exercise 
of getting out of our clothes and into bed, and out 
of our bed and into clothes, was an ordinary human 
accomplishment, and not an athletic problem tinged 
with embarrassment. 

The Canadian sleeper is a roomy and attractive 
Pullman, with wide and comfortable back to back 
seats, each internal pair called a section. At night 
the seats are pulled together, and the padding at 
their backs pulled down, so that a most efficient bed 
is formed. A section of the roof lets down, resolv- 
ing itself into an upper bunk, while long green cur- 
tains from roof to floor, and wood panels at foot and 
head complete the privacy. 

In these sleepers Canadians make the week's 
journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There 
is no separation of sexes, and a woman may find that 
she is sharing a section with a strange male quite 
as a matter of course, the only distinction being that 
the chivalrous Canadian always gives up the bottom 
berth, if it is his, to the lady, and climbs to the top 
himself. 

In these circumstances, to remove one's clothes, 
and particularly that part that proclaims one's gen- 
der, is a problem. I have tried it. One switches 
on the little electric reading light, climbs into the 
bunk, buttons up the green curtains, and then in a 
space a trifle larger than a coffin endeavours to re- 
move, and place tidily, one's clothes (for articles 



Betzveen St. John and Halifax 39 

scattered on that narrow bunk during the struggle 
mean that one ends by becoming simply a tangle 
of garments). 

At these moments one realizes that hands, arms, 
legs, and head have been given one to complicate 
things. One jams them against everything. And 
there are times, too, when the unpractised Briton 
is simply baffled. 

They tell in every Canadian train the tale of the 
Englishman who came face to face with such a crisis. 
Having removed most of his garments, he came to 
that point where the ingenuity of human nature 
seemed to fail. He pondered it. The matter 
seemed insuperable. And he began to wonder if. 
. . . He put his head through his curtains and 
shouted along the crowded — and mixed — green 
corridor of the car : 

" I say, porter, does one take off one's trousers in 
this train?" 

Most of the railways, the Canadian Pacific cer- 
tainly, are putting on compartment cars; that is, a 
car made up of roomy private sections, holding two 
berths. On most sleepers, too, there is a drawing- 
room compartment that gives the same privacy. 
These are both comfortable and convenient, for, 
apart from privacy, the passenger does not have to 
take his place in the queue waiting to wash at one 
of the three basins provided in the little section at 
the end of the car that is also the smoking-room. 

It must not be thought that the sleepers are any- 
thing but comfortable; they are so comfortable as 
to make travelling in them ideal. The passenger, 



40 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

also, has the run of the train, and can go to the ob- 
servation car, where he can spend his time in an 
easy chair, looking through the broad windows at 
the scenery, or reading one of the many magazines 
or papers the train provides; or he can write his let- 
ters on train paper at a desk; can go out to the broad 
railed platform at the rear of the car, and sit and 
smoke, and see Canada unrolling behind him. 

And at the appropriate times for breakfast, din- 
ner and supper — that is the Canadian routine, and 
there is no tea — the passenger goes to the diner 
and has a meal from a menu that would make the 
manager of many a London hotel feel anxious for 
his reputation. 

II 

We had some experience of the lavishness and 
variety of Canadian meals in St. John, when we had 
ordered what would have been an ordinary dinner 
in London, and had had to cry " Kamerad! '" after 
the fish. 

The first Canadian breakfast we had on the Cana- 
dian National was of the same order. It began, in- 
evitably, with ice-water. Ice-water is the thing 
that waiters fill up intervals with. Instead of paus- 
ing between courses for the usual waiter's medita- 
tion, they make instinctively for the silver ice-water 
jug, and fill every defenceless glass. Ice-water is 
universal. It is taken before, during and after every 
meal, and there are ice-water tanks (and paper 
cups) on every railway carriage and every hotel. 
At first one loathes it, and it seems to create an 



Between St. John and Halifax 41 

unnatural thirst, but the habit for it is soon attained. 

The menu for breakfast is always varied and 
long — and I speak not merely of the special trains 
we travelled in, for it was the same on ordinary 
passenger trains. One does not face a table d'hote 
meal outside of which there is no alternative but 
starvation, but one is given the choice of a range 
of dishes for any of the three meals that equals the 
choice offered by the best hotels in London. 

Breakfast begins with fruit; breakfast is not break- 
fast in the American continent unless it begins with 
fruit. And at that precise time breakfast fruit was 
blueberries. Other fruit was on the menu: rasp- 
berries, melon, grape-fruit, canteloupe, orange- 
slices, orange juice, and so on; but to avoid blue- 
berries was to be suspected of being eccentric, and 
even an alien enemy. 

Blueberries were in season. Blueberries and 
cream were being eaten at breakfast with something 
more than mere satisfaction by the entire Canadian 
nation. Blueberries were being consumed with a 
sort of patriotic fervour, for blueberries have a sig- 
nificance to the Canadian. It is a fruit peculiarly 
his own; he treats it as a sort of emblem, he waxes 
enthusiastic over it, and the stranger feels that if 
he does not eat it (with cream, or cooked as " Deep 
Blueberry Pie "), he has not justified his journey to 
the Dominion. Hint that it is merely the English 
bilberry or blaeberry, or whortleberry and — but 
no one dares hint that. The blueberry is in season. 
One eats it with cream, and it is worth eating. 

You may follow with what the Canadian calls 



42 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

" oats," but which you call porridge, or, being wiser 
since the dinner at St. John, you go straight on to 
halibut steak, or Gaspe salmon, or trout, or Jack 
Frost sausages, or just bacon and eggs. There is a 
range that would have pleased you in an hotel, but 
which fills you with wonder on a train. 

And not merely the range, but the prodigality of 
the portions, surprises. Your halibut or salmon or 
trout is not a strip that seems like a sample, it is a 
solid slice of exquisitely cooked fish that looks dan- 
gerously near a full pound, and all the portions are 
on the same scale, so that you soon come to recognize 
that, unless you ration yourself severely, you cannot 
possibly hope to survive against this Dominion of 
Food. 

When we sat down to that breakfast in the Cana- 
dian National diner I think we realized more em- 
phatically than we had through the whole course of 
our reading how prodigal and rich a land Canada 
was. As we sat at our meal we could watch from 
the windows the unfolding of the streams and the in- 
numerable lovely lakes, that expand suddenly out of 
the spruce forests that clad the rocky hills and the 
sharp valleys of Nova Scotia. 

We could see the homestead clearings, the rich 
land already under service and the cattle thereon. 
It was from those numberless pebbly rivers and lakes 
that this abundance in fish came; in the forests was 
game, caribou and moose and winged game. From 
the cleared land came the wheat and the other grow- 
ing things that crowd the Canadian table, and the 
herds represented the meat, and the unstinted supply 



Between St. John and Halifax 43 

•of cream and milk and butter. Even the half- 
cleared land, where tree stumps and bushes still held 
sway, there was the blueberry, growing with the 
joyous luxuriance of a useful weed. 

To glance out of the window was to realize more 
than this, it was to realize that in spite of all this 
luxuriance the land was yet barely scratched. The 
homesteads are even now but isolated outposts in 
the undisciplined wilderness, and when we realized 
that this was but a section, and a small section at 
that, of a Dominion stretching thousands of miles 
between us and the Pacific, and how many thousand 
miles on the line North to South we could not com- 
pute, we began to get a glimmer of the immensity 
and potentiality of the land we had just entered. 

There is nothing like a concrete demonstration to 
convince the mind, and I recognize it was that heroic 
breakfast undertaken while I contemplated the heroic 
land from whence it had come that brought home to 
me with a sense almost of shock an appreciation of 
Canada's greatness. 

By the time I had arrived at Halifax, and had a 
Canadian National Railway lunch (for we remained 
on the train for the whole of our stay in the city) 
I knew I was to face immensities. 



CHAPTER IV 

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA 



THE first citizen of Halifax to recognize the 
Prince of Wales was a little boy: and it 
was worth a cool twenty cents to him. 

The official entry of His Royal Highness into 
Halifax was fixed for Monday, August 18th. The 
Dragon and Dauntless, however, arrived on Sun- 
day, and the Prince saw in the free day an opportun- 
ity for getting in a few hours' walking. 

He landed quietly, and with his camera spent some 
time walking through and snapping the interesting 
spots in the city. He climbed the hill to where the 
massive and slightly melodramatic citadel that his 
own ancestor, the Duke of Kent, had built on the 
hill dominates the city, and continued from there 
his walk through the tree-fringed streets. 

At the very toe of the long peninsula upon which 
Halifax is built he walked through Point Pleasant, 
a park of great, and untrammelled, natural beauty, 
thicketed with trees through which he could catch 
many vivid and beautiful glimpses of the intensely 
blue harbour water beneath the slope. 

It was in this park that the young punter pulled 
off his coup. 

He was one of a number of kiddies occupied in 

44 



Halifax, Nova Scotia 45 

the national sport of Halifax — bathing. He and 
his friends spotted the Prince and his party before 
that party saw them. Being a person of acumen the 
wise kid immediately " placed " His Royal Highness, 
and saw the opportunity for financial operations. 

" Betcher ten cents that's the Prince of Wales/' 
he said, accommodating the whole group, where- 
upon the inevitable sceptic retorted: 

" Naw, that ain't no Prince. Anyhow he doesn't 
come till tomorrow, see." 

" Is the Prince, I tell you," insisted the plunger. 
" And see here, betcher another ten cents I goes and 
asks him." 

The second as well as the first bet was taken. 
And both were won. 

This is not the only story connected with the Sun- 
day stroll of the Prince. Another, and perhaps a 
romantic version of the same one, was that it was 
the Prince who made and lost the bet. He was said 
to have come upon not boys but girls bathing. See- 
ing one of them poised skirted and stockinged, for 
all the world as though she were the authentic bath- 
ing girl on the cover of an American magazine, 
ready to dive, he bet her a cool twenty that she dare 
not take her plunge from the highest board. 

This story may be true or it may be, well, Cana- 
dian. I mean by that it may be one of the jolly 
stories that Canadians from the very beginning be- 
gan to weave about the personality of His Royal 
Highness. It is, indeed, an indication of his popu- 
larity that he became the centre of a host of yarns, 
true or apocryphal, that followed him and accumu- 



46 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

lated until they became almost a saga by the time the 
tour was finished 

II 

In this short stroll the Prince saw much of a town 
that is certainly worth seeing. 

Halifax on the first impact has a drab air that 
comes as a shock to those who sail through the sharp, 
green hills of the Narrows and see the hilly peninsula 
on which the town is built hanging graciously over 
the sparkling blue waters of one of the finest and 
greatest harbours in the world. 

From the water the multi-coloured massing of the 
houses is broken up and softened by the vividness of 
the parks and the green billowing of the trees that 
line most of the streets. Landing, the newcomer is 
at once steeped in the depressing air of a seaport 
town that has not troubled to keep its houses in the 
brightest condition. As many of those houses are 
of wood, the youthful sparkle of which vanishes in 
the maturity of ill-kept paintwork, the first impres- 
sion of Halifax is actually more melancholy than it 
deserves to be. 

The long drive through Water Street from the 
docks, moreover, merely lands one into a business 
centre where the effect of many good buildings is 
spoilt by the narrowness of the streets. Such a con- 
dition of things is no doubt unavoidable in a town 
that is both commercial and old, but those who only 
see this side of Halifax had better appreciate the 
fact that the city is Canadian and new also, and that 
there are residential districts that are as comely and 



Halifax, Nova Scotia 47 

as up-to-date as anywhere in the Western Continent. 

Halifax certainly blends history and business in a 
way to make it the most English of towns. It is like 
nothing so much as a seaport in the North of Eng- 
land plus a Canadian accent. 

There is the same packed mass movement of a 
lively polyglot people through the streets. There is 
the same keen appetite for living that sends people 
out of doors to walk in contact with their fellows 
under the light of the many-globed electric standards 
that line the sidewalk. 

There is the same air of bright prosperity in the 
glowing and vivacious light of the fine and tasteful 
shops. They are good shops, and their windows 
are displayed with an artistry that one finds is char- 
acteristic throughout Canada. They offer the latest 
and smartest ideas in blouses and gowns, jewellery 
and boots and cameras — I should like to find out 
what percentage of the population of the American 
Continent does not use a camera — and men's shirt- 
ings, shirtings that one views with awe, shirtings of 
silk with emotional stripes and futuristic designs, 
and collars to match the shirts, the sort of shirts that 
Solomon in all his glory seems to have designed for 
festival days. 

At night, certainly, the streets of Halifax are 
bright and vivid, and the people in them good- 
humoured, laughing and sturdy, with that contempt 
of affectation that is characteristic of the English 
north. 

The bustle and vividness as well as the greyness 
of Halifax lets one into the open secret that it is 



48 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

a great industrial port of Canada, and an all-the- 
year-round port at that, yet it is the greyness and 
narrowness of the streets that tells you that Halifax 
is also history. In the old buildings, and their 
straggled frontage, is written the fact that the city 
grew up before modernity set its mark on Canada 
in the spacious and broad planning of townships. 

It was, for years, the garrison of Britain in the 
Americas. Since the day when Cornwallis landed 
in 1749 with his group of settlers to secure the key 
harbour on the Eastern seaboard of America until 
the Canadians themselves took over its garrisoning, 
it was the military and naval base of our forces. 
And in that capacity it has formed part of the stage 
setting for every phase of the Western historical 
drama. 

It was the rendezvous of Wolfe before Quebec; it 
played a part in the American War of Independence ; 
it was a refuge for the United Empire Loyalists; 
British ships used it as a base in the war of 18 12; 
from its anchorage the bold and crafty blockade 
runners slipped south in the American Civil War, 
and its citizens grew fat through those adventurous 
voyages. It has been the host of generations of 
great seamen from Cook, who navigated Wolfe's 
fleet up the St. Lawrence, to Nelson. It housed the 
survivors of the Titanic, and was the refuge of the 
Mauretania when the beginning of the Great War 
found her on the high seas. It has had German 
submarines lying off the Narrows, so close that it 
saw torpedoed crews return to its quays only an 
hour or so after their ships had sailed. 



Halifax, Nova Scotia 49 

in 

The Prince of Wales was himself a link in Hali- 
fax's history. Not merely had his great-great 
grandfather, the Duke of Kent, commanded at the 
Citadel, but when he landed he stepped over the in- 
scribed stone commemorating the landing on that 
spot of his grandfather on July 30th, i860, and his 
father in 1901. 

His Royal Highness made his official landing in 
the Naval Dockyard on the morning of Monday, 
August 1 8th. As he landed he was saluted by the 
guns of three nations, for two French war sloops and 
the fine Italian battleship Cavour, which had come 
to Halifax to be present during his visit, joined in 
when the guns on shore and on the British warship 
saluted. 

At the landing stage the reception was a quiet 
one, only notabilities and guards of honour occupy- 
ing the Navy Yard, but this quietness was only the 
prelude to a day of sheer hustle. 

The crowd thickened steadily until he arrived in 
the heart of the city, when it resolved itself into a 
jam of people that the narrow streets failed to ac- 
commodate. This crowd, as in most towns of 
Canada, believed in a " close up " view. Even when 
there is plenty of space the onlookers move up to 
the centre of the street, allowing a passageway of 
very little more than the breadth of a motor-car. 
Policemen of broad and indulgent mind are present 
to keep the crowd in order, and when policemen 
give out, war veterans in khaki or " civvies " and 



50 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

boy scouts string the line, but all — policemen, 
veterans and scouts — so mixing with the crowd that 
they become an indistinguishable part of it, so that 
it is all crowd, cheery and friendly and most inti- 
mate in its greeting. That was the air of the Hali- 
fax crowd. 

It always seemed to me that after the roaring 
greeting of the streets the formal civic addresses of 
welcome were acts of supererogation. Yet there 
is no doubt as to the dignity and colour of these 
functions. 

From the packed street the Prince passed into the 
great chamber of the Provincial Parliament Build- 
ing, where there seemed an air of soft, red twilight 
compounded from the colour of the walls and the old 
pictures, as well as from the robes and uniforms 
of the dignitaries and the gowns of the many 
ladies. 

As ceremonies these welcomes were always short, 
though there was always a number of presentations 
made, and the Prince was soon in the open again. 
In the open there were war veterans to inspect, for in 
whatever town he entered, large or small or remote, 
there was always a good showing of Canadians who 
had served and won honours in Europe. 

Everywhere, in great cities or in a hamlet that was 
no more than a scattering of homesteads round a 
prairie's siding, His Royal Highness showed a par- 
ticular keenness to meet these soldiers. They were 
his own comrades in arms, as he always called them, 
and when he said that he meant it, for he never 
willingly missed an opportunity of getting among 



Halifax, Nova Scotia 51 

them and resuming the comradeship he had learned 
to value at the Front. 

In most towns, as in Halifax, his reund of visits 
always included the hospitals. His car took him 
through the bright sunshine of the Halifax streets 
to these big and very efficient buildings, where he 
went through the wards, chatting here and there to 
a cot or a convalescent patient, and not forgetting 
the natty Canadian nurses or the doctors, or even, 
as in one of the hospitals on this day, a patient lying 
in a tent in the grounds outside the radius of the 
visit. 

In Halifax, also, there was another grim fact of 
the war which called for special attention; that was 
the area devastated by the terrible explosion of a 
ship in the docks in December, 19 17. 

The party left the main streets to climb over the 
shoulder of the peninsula to where the ruined area 
stood. It is to the north of the town, on the side of 
the hill that curves largely to the very water's edge. 
Down off the docks, and an immense distance away 
it seems from the slope of ruin, a steamer loaded 
with high explosive collided with another, caught fire 
and blew up, and on the entire bosom of that slope 
can be seen what that gigantic detonation accom- 
plished. 

The force of the explosion swept up the hill and 
the wooden houses went down like things of card. 
In the trail of the explosion followed fire. As the 
plank houses collapsed the fires within them ignited 
their frail fabric and the entire hillside became a 
mass of flames. 



52 Westward with the Prmce of Wales 

The Prince looked upon a hill set with scars in 
rows, the rock foundations of houses that had been. 
Houses had, in the main, disappeared, though here 
and there there was a crazy structure hanging to- 
gether by nails only. Across the arm of the harbour, 
on the pretty, wooded Dartmouth side, he could see 
among the trees the sprawled ugliness of the ruin 
the explosion had spread even there. 

On this bleak slope, where the grass was growing 
raggedly over the ruins, the old inhabitants were 
showing little inclination to return. Only a few neat 
houses were in course of erection where, before, there 
had been thousands. It was as though the hillside 
had become evil, and men feared it. 

Over the hill, and by roads which are best de- 
scribed as corrugated (outside the main town roads 
of Canada, faith, hope and strong springs are the 
best companions on a motor ride), he went to where 
a new district is being built to house the victims of 
the disaster. 

Modern Canada is having its way in this new area, 
and broad streets, grass lawns and pretty houses of 
wood, brick or concrete with characteristic porches 
give these new homes the atmosphere of the garden 
city. 

Perched as it is high on the hill, with the sparkling 
water of the harbour close by, one can easily argue 
that good has come out of the evil. But as one 
mutters the platitude the Canadian who drives the 
car points to the long, tramless hill that connects the 
place with the heart of the city, and tells you curtly: 

" That's called Hungry Hill." 



Halifax, Nova Scotia 53 

" Why Hungry Hill?" 

" It's so long that a man dies of hunger before he 
can get home from his office." 



IV 

The social side of the visit followed. 

The Prince went from the devastated area, and 
from his visit to some of the people who were al- 
ready housed in their new homes, through the at- 
tractive residential streets of Halifax to the Waeg- 
woltic Club. 

This club is altogether charming, and one of the 
most perfect places of recreation I have seen. The 
club-house is a low, white rambling building set 
among trees and the most perfect of lawns. It has 
really beautiful suites of rooms, including a dancing 
hall and a dining-room. From its broad verandah a 
steep grass slope drops down to the sea water of one 
of the harbour arms. Many trees shade the slope 
and the idling paths on it, and through the trees 
shines the water, which has an astonishing blueness. 

At the water's edge is a bathing place, with board 
rafts and a high skeleton diving platform. Here are 
boys and girls, looking as though they were posing 
for Harrison Fisher, diving, or lolling in the vivid 
sun on the plank rafts. 

With its bright sea, on which are canoes and scar- 
let sailed yachts, the vivid green of its grass slopes 
under the superb trees, the Waegwoltic Club is idyl- 
lic. It is the dream of the perfect holiday place 
come true. 



54 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Quite close to it is another club of individuality. 
It is a club without club-house that has existed in 
that state for over sixty years. 

This is the Studley Quoit Club, which the Prince 
visited after he had lunched at the Waegwoltic. Its 
premises are made up of a quoit field, a fence and 
some trees, and the good sportsmen, its members, 
as they showed His Royal Highness round, pointed 
solemnly to a fir to which a telephone was clamped, 
and said: 

" That is our secretary's office. " 

A table under a spruce was the dining-room, a 
book of cuttings concerning the club on a desk was 
the library, while a bench against a fence was the 
smoking lounge. It is a club of humour and pride, 
that has held together with a genial and breezy con- 
tinuity for generations. And it has two privileges, 
of which it is justly proud: one is the right to fly the 
British Navy ensign, gained through one of its first 
members, an admiral; the other is that its rum punch 
yet survives in a dry land. 

The Prince's visit to such a gathering of sportsmen 
was, naturally, an affair of delightful informality. 
There was a certain swopping of reminiscences of 
the King, who had also visited the club, and a certain 
dry attitude of awe in the President, who, in speaking 
of the honours the Prince had accepted just before 
leaving England, said that though the members of 
the Studley Club felt competent to entertain His 
Royal Highness as a Colonel of the Guards, as the 
Grand Master of Freemasons, or even, at a pinch, as 
a King's Counsel, they felt while in their earthly 



Halifax, Nova Scotia $$ 

flesh some trepidation in offering hospitality to a 
Brother of the Trinity — a celestial office which, the 
President understood, the Prince had accepted prior 
to his journey. 

It was a happy little gathering, a relief, perhaps, 
from set functions, and the Prince entered fully into 
the spirit of the occasion. He drank the famous 
punch, and signed the Club roll, showing great 
amusement when some one asked him if he were 
signing the pledge. 

On leaving this quaint club he came in for a cheery 
mobbing; men and women crowded round him, flap- 
pers stormed his car in the hope of shaking hands, 
while babies held up by elders won the handclasp 
without a struggle. 

A crowded day was closed by a yet more crowded 
reception. It was an open reception of the kind 
which I believe I am right in saying the Prince him- 
self was responsible for initiating on this trip. It 
was a reception not of privileged people bearing in- 
vitations, but of the whole city. 

The whole city came. 

Citizens of all ages and all occupations rolled up 
at Government House to meet His Royal Highness. 
They filled the broad lawn in front of the rather 
meek stone building, and overflowed into the street. 
They waited wedged tightly together in hot and 
sunny weather until they could take their turn in the 
endless file that was pushing into the house where the 
Prince was waiting to shake hands with them. 

It was a gathering of every conceivable type of 
citizen. Silks and New York frocks had no advan- 



56 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

tage over gingham and " ready to wear." Judge's 
wife and general's took their turn with the girl clerk 
from the drug store and their char lady's daughter. 
Workers still in their overalls, boys in their shirt- 
sleeves, soldiers and dockside workers and teamsters 
all joined in the crowd that passed for hours before 
the Prince. 

At St. John he had shaken hands with some 2,000 
people in such a reception as this, at Halifax the 
figure could not have been less, and it was probably 
more. He shook hands with all who came, and had 
a word with most, even with those admirable but 
embarrassing old ladies (one of whom at least ap- 
peared at each of these functions) who declared that, 
having lived long enough to see the children of two 
British rulers, they were anxious that he should lose 
no time in giving them the chance of seeing the chil- 
dren of a third. 

It was an astonishing spectacle of affable democ- 
racy, and in effect it was perhaps the happiest idea 
in the tour. The popularity of these " open to all 
the town " meetings was astonishing. " The Every- 
day People " whom the Prince had expressed so 
eager a desire to see and meet came to these recep- 
tions in such overwhelming numbers that in large 
cities such as Toronto, Ottawa and the like it was 
manifestly impossible for him to meet even a fraction 
of the numbers. 

Yet this fact did not mar the receptions. The 
people of Canada understood that he was making a 
real attempt at meeting as many of them as was 
humanly possible, and even those who did not get 



Halifax, Nova Scotia 57 

close enough to shake his hand were able to recog- 
nize that his desire was genuine as his happiness in 
meeting them was unaffected and friendly. 

The public receptions were the result of an un- 
studied democratic impulse, and the Canadian people 
were of all people those able to appreciate that im- 
pulse most. 



CHAPTER V 

CHARLOTTETOWN, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, 



THE Prince of Wales and his cruiser escort 
left Halifax on the night of Monday, 
August 1 8th, for Prince Edward Island, 
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, arriving at the capital 
of that province the next morning. 

Owing to the difficulty of getting across country, 
the Press correspondents were unable to be present 
at this visit, and went direct by train to Quebec to 
await the Prince's arrival. 

We were sorry not to visit this tiny, self-contained 
province of the Dominion, for we had heard much 
concerning its charm and individuality in character. 
It is a fertile little island, rich in agriculture, sport 
and fishing. It is an island of bright red beaches and 
green downs set in a clear sea, an Eden for bathers 
and holiday-makers. 

It is also one of the last rallying-points of the silver 
fox, which is bred by the islanders for the fur market. 
This is a pocket industry unique in Canada. The 
animals are tended with the care given to prize fowls, 
each having its own kennel and wire run. Such 
domesticity renders them neither hardy nor prolific, 
and the breeding is an exacting pursuit. 

58 



Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island 59 

At the capital, Charlottetown, His Royal High- 
ness had a real Canadian welcome, tinged not a little 
with excitement. While he was on the racecourse 
one of the stands took fire, and there was the begin- 
ning of a panic, men and women starting to clamber 
wildly out of it and dropping from its sides. The 
Prince, however, kept his place and continued to 
watch the races. His presence on the stand quieted 
the nervous and checked what might have been an 
ugly rush, while the fire was very quickly got under. 

Off Charlottetown the Prince transferred again to 
the battle-cruiser Renown, and finished the last sec- 
tion of his sea voyage up the great St. Lawrence on 
her. 

11 

Our disappointment at not seeing Prince Edward 
Island was mitigated by the glimpses we had from 
our train of the country of New Brunswick and the 
great area of the habitants that surrounds Quebec. 

On the morning of August 19th we woke to the 
broken country of New Brunswick. The forests of 
spruce, pine, maple and poplar made walls on the 
very fringe of the single-line railway track for miles, 
giving way abruptly to broad and placid lakes, or to 
sharp narrow valleys, in which shallow streams 
pressed forward over beds of white stone and rock. 
At this time the streams were narrowed down to a 
slim channel, but the broad area of white shingle — 
frequently scored by many subsidiary thin channels 
of water — gave an idea of what these streams were 
like in flood. 



60 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

There was a great deal of unfriendly black rock in 
the land pushing itself boldly up in hills, or cropping 
out from the thin covering soil. Here and there 
were the clearings of homesteaders, who lived some- 
times in pretty plank houses, sometimes in the low 
shacks of rough logs that seemed to be put in the 
clearings — some of them not yet free of the high 
tree stumps — in order to give the land its authentic 
local colour. 

On the streams that flow between the walls of 
trees there were always logs. Logs sometimes jam- 
ming the whole fairway with an indescribable jumble, 
logs collected into river bays with a neatness that 
made the surface of the water appear one great raft, 
and by these " log booms " there was, usually, the 
piles of squared timber, and the collection of rough 
wooden houses that formed the mill. 

The mills have the air of being pit-head workings 
dealing with a cleaner material than coal. About 
them are lengthy conveyors, built up on high trestle 
timbers, that carry the logs from the water to the 
mill and from the mill to the dumps, that one in- 
stantly compares to the conveyors and winding gear 
of a coal mine. Beneath the conveyors are great 
ragged mounds of short logs cut into sections for the 
paper pulp trade, and jumbled heaps of shorter sec- 
tions that are to serve as the winter firing for whole 
districts; these have the contours of coal dumps, 
while fed from chutes are hillocks of golden sawdust 
as big and as conspicuous as the ash and slag mounds 
of the mining areas. 

In the mill yards are stacks and stacks of house 



Charlottetown, Prince Ed ward Island 61 

planks that the great saws have sliced up with an 
uncanny ease and speed, stacks of square shingles for 
roofs and miles of squared beams. 

We passed not a few but a multitude of these 
" booms " and mills, and our minds began to grasp 
the vastness of this natural and national industry. 
And yet it is not in the main a whole-time industry. 
For a large section of its workers it is a side line, an 
occupation for days that would otherwise be idle. 
It is the winter work of farmers, who, forced to 
cease their own labours owing to the deep snow and 
the frosts, turn to lumbering to keep them busy until 
the thaw sets in. 

That fact helps the mind to realize the potential- 
ities of Canada. Here is a business as big as coal 
mining that is largely the fruit of work in days when 
there is little else to do. 

We saw this industry at a time when the streams 
were congested and the mills inactive. It was the 
summer season, but, more than that, the lack of 
transport, owing to the sinking, or the surrender by 
Canada for war purposes, of so much ship space, was 
having its effect on the lumber trade. The market, 
even as far as Britain, was in urgent need of timber, 
and the timber was ready for the market; but the ex- 
igencies, or, as some Canadians were inclined to ar- 
gue, the muddle of shipping conditions, were holding 
up this, as well as many other of the Dominion in- 
dustries. 

In this sporting country there are many likely 
looking streams for fishermen, as there are likely 
looking forests for game. At New Castle we 



62 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

touched the Miramichi, which has the reputation of 
being the finest salmon-fishing river in New Bruns- 
wick; the Nepisiquit, the mouth of which we skirted 
at Bathurst, is also a great centre for fishermen, and, 
indeed, the whole of this country about the shores 
of the great Baie de Chaleur — that immense thrust 
made by the Gulf of St. Lawrence between the prov- 
inces of New Brunswick and Quebec — is a paradise 
for holiday-makers and sportsmen, who, besides their 
fishing, get excellent shooting at brant, geese, duck, 
and all kinds of game. 

The Canadian of the cities has his country cottage 
in this splendidly beautiful area, which he comes to 
for his recreation, and at other times leaves in charge 
of a local farmer, who fills his wood shed with fire 
logs from the forest in the summer, and his ice house 
with ice from the rivers in winter. 



Ill 

In this district, and long before we reached the 
Quebec border, we came to the country of the habit- 
ant farmer. As we stopped at sections to water or 
change engines, we saw that this was a land where 
man must be master of two tongues if he is to make 
himself understood. It is a land where we read on 
a shop window the legend: " J. Art Levesque. 
Barbier. Agent du Lowdnes Co. Habits sur com- 
manded' Here the habitant does business at La 
Banque Nationale, and takes his pleasure at the 
Exposition Provinciale, where his skill can win him 
Prix Populaires. 



Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island 63 

On the stations we talked with men in British 
khaki trousers who told us in a language in which 
Canadian French and camp English was strangely 
mingled of the service they had seen on the British 
front. 

It is the district where the clever and painstaking 
French agriculturist gets every grain out of the soil, 
a district where we could see the spire of a parish 
church every six miles, the land of a people, sturdy, 
devout, tenacious and law-abiding, the " true ' Cana- 
yen ' themselves," 

" And in their veins the same red stream: 
The conquering blood of Normandie 
Flowed strong, and gave America 
Coureurs de bois and voyageurs 
Whose trail extends from sea to sea ! " 

as William Henry Drummond, a true poet who drew 
from them inspiration for his delightful dialect verse, 
describes them. 

The railway passes for hundreds of miles between 
habitant farms. The land is beautifully cared for, 
every fragment of rock, from a boulder to a pebble, 
having been collected from the soil through genera- 
tions, and piled in long, thin caches in the centres of 
the fields. The effect of passing for hundreds of 
miles between these precisely aligned cairns is 
strange; one cannot get away from the feeling that 
the rocky mounds are there for some barbaric tribal 
reason, and that presently one will see a war dance 
or a sacrifice taking place about one of them. 

The farms themselves have a strange appearance. 



64 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

They have an abnormally narrow frontage. They 
are railed in strips of not much greater breadth than 
a London back garden, though they extend away 
from the railway to a depth of a mile and more. 
At first this grouping of the land appears accidental, 
but the endlessness of the strange design soon con- 
vinces that there is a purpose underlying it. 

Two explanations are offered. One is that the 
land has been parcelled out in this way, and not on a 
broad square acreage, because in the old pioneer days 
it afforded the best means of grouping the home- 
steads together for defence against the Red Man. 
The other is that it is the result of the French- 
Canadian law which enforces the division of an 
estate among children in exact proportion, and thus 
the original big farms have been split up into equal 
strips among the descendants of the original owner. 
Either of these explanations, or the combination of 
them, can be accepted. 

At Campbellton, a pretty, toy-like town, close up 
to La Bale de Chaleur, there is gathered a remnant 
of the Micmac Indians, whom the first settlers feared. 
They have a settlement of their own on a peak of 
the Baie, and one of their chiefs had travelled to 
Halifax to be among those who welcomed the son 
of the Great White Chief. 

Campbellton let us into the lovely valley of the 
Matapedia, an enchanted spot where the river lolls 
on a broad bed through a grand country of grim hills 
and forests. Now and then, indeed, its channel is 
pinched into gorges where its water shines pallidly 
and angrily amid the crowded shadows of rock and 



Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island 65 

tree; usually it is the nursemaid of rich, flat valleys 
and the friend of the little frame-house hamlets that 
are linked across its waters by a spidery bridge of 
wooden trestles. At times beneath the hills it is 
swift and combed by a thousand stony fingers, and at 
other times it is an idler in Arcadie, a dilettante 
stream that wanders in half a dozen feckless channels 
over a desert of white stones, with here and there 
the green humpback of an island inviting the camper. 

Beyond Matapedia we got the thrill of the run, an 
abrupt glimpse of the St. Lawrence, steel-blue and 
apparently infinite, its thirty miles of breadth yield- 
ing not a glimpse of the farther side. A short dis- 
tance on, beyond Mont Joli, a place that might have 
come out of a sample box of French villages, the rail- 
way keeps the immense river company for the rest 
of the journey. 

The valley broadened out into an immense flat 
plain with but few traces of the wilder hills of New 
Brunswick. About the line is a belt of prosperity 
forty miles deep, all of it worked by the habitant 
owners of the narrow farms, all of it so rich that in 
the whole area from the border to the city of Quebec 
there is not a poor farmer. 

Before reaching Riviere du Loup we saw the high 
peaks of the Laurentine Mountains on the far side 
of the St. Lawrence, and on our side of the stream 
passed a grim little islet called LTslet au Massacre, 
where a party of Micmac Indians, fleeing from the 
Iroquois in the old days, were caught as they hid in 
a deep cave, and killed by a great fire that their 
enemies built at the mouth. 



66 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

We saw a few seals on the rocks of the river, but 
not a hint of the numbers that gave Riviere du Loup 
its name. It is a cameo of a town with falls sliding 
down-hill over a chute of jumbled rocks into a log- 
ging pool beneath. 

Riviere du Loup is in the last lap of the journey to 
Quebec. There are a score or so of little hamlets, 
the names of which — St. Alexandre, St. Andre, St. 
Pascal, St. Pacome, St. Valier and so on — sound 
like a reading from the Litany of the Saints. And, 
passing the last of them, we saw across the narrowed 
St. Lawrence a trail of lace against the darkness of 
the Laurentine hills, a mass of filigree that moved 
and writhed, so that we understood when some one 
said: 

11 The Montmorency Falls." 

A moment later we saw across the stream the city 
of Quebec, a hanging town of fairyland, with pin- 
nacle and spire, bastion and citadel delicate against 
the quick sky. A city of romance and charm, to 
which we hurried by the very humdrum route of the 
steam ferry that crosses to it from the Levis side. 



CHAPTER VI 

QUEBEC 



OUEBEC is not merely historic: it suggests 
history. It has the grand manner. One 
feels in one's bones that it is a city of a 
splendid past. The first sight of Quebec piled up 
on its opposite bluff where the waters of the St. 
Charles swell the mighty volume of the St. Lawrence 
convinces one that this grave city is the cradle of 
civilization in the West, the overlord of the river 
road to the sea and the heart of history and romance 
for Canada. 

One does not require prompting to recognize that 
history has to go back centuries to reach the day 
when Carder first landed here; or that Champlain 
figured bravely in its story in a brave and romantic 
era of the world, and that it was he who saw its im- 
portance as a commanding point of the great water- 
way that struck deep into the heart of the rich do- 
minion — though he did think that dominion was a 
fragment of the fabulous Indies with a door into the 
rich realms of China. 

Instinct seems to tell one that on the lifting plain 
behind the bulldog Citadel, Montcalm lost and died, 
and Wolfe died and won. 

One knows, too, that from this city thick with. 

67 



68 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

spires, streams of Christianity and civilization flowed 
west and north and south to quicken the whole bar- 
baric continent; that it was the nucleus that concen- 
trated all the energy of the vast New World. 



II 

From the decks of the three war vessels, the 
Renown and the escorting cruisers, Quebec must 
have seemed like a city of a dream hanging against 
the quiet sky of a glorious evening. 

The piled-up mass of the city on its abrupt cape is 
romantic, and suggests the drama of a Rhine castle 
with a grace and a significance that is French. On 
that evening of August 21st, when the strings and 
blobs of colour from a multitude of flags picked out 
the clustering of houses that climbed Cape Diamond 
to the grey walls of the Citadel, the city from the 
St. Lawrence had an appearance glowing and fantas- 
tic. 

From Quebec the three fine ships steaming in line 
up the blue waters of the river were a sight dramatic 
and beautiful, though from the heights and against 
the wall of cliffs on the Levis side, a mile across 
stream, the cruisers were strangely dwarfed, and 
even Renown appeared a small but desirable toy. 

In keeping with the general atmosphere of the 
town and toy-like ships, Quebec herself put a touch 
of the fantastic into the charm of her greeting. 

As the cruisers dressed ship, and joined with the 
guns of the Citadel in the salute, there soared from 
the city itself scores of maroons. From the flash 



Quebec 69 



and smoke of their bursts there fluttered down many 
coloured things. Caught by the wind, these things 
opened out into parachutes, from which were sus- 
pended large silk flags. Soon the sky was flecked 
with the bright, tricoloured bubbles of parachutes, 
bearing Jacks and Navy Ensigns, Tricolours and 
Royal Standards down the wind. 

The official landing at King's Wharf was full of 
characteristic colour also. It was in a wide, open 
space right under the grey rock upon which the 
Citadel is reared. In this square, tapestried with 
flags, and in a little canvas pavilion of bright red and 
white, the Prince met the leading sons of Quebec, 
the French-Canadian and the English-Canadian; the 
Bishop of the English cathedral in gaiters and apron, 
the Bishops of the Catholics in corded hats, scarlet 
gloves and long cassocks. Sailors and soldiers, 
women in bright and smart gowns gave the reception 
a glow and vivacity that had a quality true to Quebec. 

From this short ceremony the Prince drove 
through the quaint streets to the Citadel. In the 
lower town under the rock his way led through a 
quarter that might well stage a Stanley Weyman 
romance. It is a quarter where, between high- 
shouldered, straight-faced houses, run the narrowest 
of streets, some of them, like Sous le Cap, so 
cramped that it is merely practical to use windows as 
the supports for clothes-lines, and to hang the alleys 
with banners of drying washing. 

In these cramped streets named with the names of 
saints, are sudden little squares, streets that are mere 
staircases up to the cliff-top, and others that deserve 



70 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the name of one of them, The Mountain. In these 
narrow canyons, through which the single-decked 
electric trams thunder like mammoths who have lost 
their way, are most of the commercial houses and 
nearly all the mud of the city. 

At the end of this olden quarter, merging from 
the very air of antiquity in the streets, Quebec, with 
a characteristic Canadian gesture, adopts modernity. 
That is the vivid thing about the city. It is not 
merely historical: it is up-to-date. It is not merely 
the past, but it is the future also. At the end of the 
old, cramped streets stands Quebec's future — its 
docks. 

These great dockyards at the very toe of the cape 
are the latest things of their kind. They have been 
built to take the traffic of tomorrow as well as today. 
Greater ships than those yet built can lie in safe 
water alongside the huge new concrete quays. Great 
ships can go into dry dock here, or across the water 
in the shipyards of Levis. They even build or put 
together ships of large tonnage, and while we were 
there, there were ships in half sections; by them- 
selves too big to be floated down from the lakes 
through the locks, they had come down from the 
building slips in floatable halves to be riveted to- 
gether in Quebec. 

A web of railways serves these great harbour 
basins, and the latest mechanical loading gear can 
whip cargo out of ships or into them at record speed 
and with infinite ease. Huge elevators — one con- 
crete monster that had been reared in a Canadian 
hustle of seven days — can stream grain by the 



Quebec 71 



million tons into holds, while troops, passengers and 
the whole mechanics of human transport can be 
handled with the greatest facility. 

The Prince went up the steep cobbled street of 
The Mountain under the grey, solid old masonry 
of the Battery that hangs over the town in front of 
Laval University, that with the Archbishop's palace 
looks like a piece of old France translated bodily to 
Canada. 

So he came to the big, green Place des Armes, not 
now a place of arms, and at that particular moment 
not green, but as thick as a gigantic flower-bed with 
the pretty dresses of pretty women — and there is 
all the French charm in the beauty of the women of 
Quebec — and with the khaki and commonplace of 
soldiers and civilians. A mighty and enthusiastic 
crowd that did not allow its French accent to hinder 
the shout of welcome it had caught up from the 
throng that lined the slopes of The Mountain. 

From this point the route twisted to the right 
along the Grande Allee, going first between tall and 
upright houses, jalousied and severe faced, to where 
a strip of side road swung it left again, and up hill 
to the Citadel, where His Royal Highness lived dur- 
ing his stay. 

From the Place des Armes the profile of the town 
pushes back along the heights to the peak on which 
is the Citadel, a squat and massive structure that 
seems to have grown rather than to have been built 
from the living rock upon which it is based. 

Between the Citadel and the Place des Armes 
there is a long, grey stone wall above the green 



72 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

glacis of the cliff. It has the look of a military wall, 
and it is not a military wall. It supports merely a 
superb-promenade, Dufferin Terrace, a great plank 
walk poised sheer above the river, the like of which 
would be hard to equal anywhere. On this the 
homely people of Quebec take the air in a manner 
more sumptuous than many of the most aristocratic 
resorts in Europe. 

At the eastern end of this terrace, and forming 
the wing of the Place des Armes, is the medieval 
structure of the Chateau Frontenac, a building not 
really more antique than the area of hotels de luxe, 
of which it is an extremely fine example, but so 
planned by its designers as to fit delightfully into the 
antique texture of the town. 

Below and shelving away eastward again is the 
congested old town, through which the Prince had 
come, and behind Citadel and promenade, and 
stretching over the plateau of the cape, is a town of 
broad and comely streets, many trees and great 
parks as modern as anything in Canada. 

That night the bi^ Dufferin Terrace was thronged 
by people out to see the firework display from the 
Citadel, and to watch the illuminations of the city 
and of the ships down on the calm surface of the 
water. It was rather an unexpected crowd. There 
were the sexes by the thousands packed together on 
that big esplanade, listening to the band, looking at 
the fireworks and lights, the whole town was there 
in a holiday mood, and there was not the slightest 
hint of horseplay or disorder. 

The crowd enjoyed itself calmly and gracefully; 



Quebec 73 



there were none of those syncopated sounds or 
movements which in an English crowd show 7 that 
youth is being served with pleasure. The quiet en- 
joyment of this good-tempered and vivacious throng 
is the marked attitude of such Canadian gatherings. 
I saw in other towns big crowds gathered at the 
dances held in the street to celebrate the Prince's 
visit. Although thousands of people of all grades 
and tempers came together to dance or to watch 
the dancing, there was never the slightest sign of 
rowdyism or disorder. 

On this and the next two nights Quebec added t© 
its beauty. All the public buildings were outlined 
in electric light, so that it looked more than ever a 
fairy city hanging in the air. The cruisers in the 
stream were outlined, deck and spar and stack, in 
light, and Renown had poised between her masts a 
bright set of the Prince of Wales's feathers, the 
lights of the whole group of ships being mirrored in 
the river. On Friday Renown gave a display of 
fireworks and searchlights, the beauty of which was 
doubled by the reflections in the water. 



Ill 

Friday and Saturday (August 22 and 23) were 
strenuous days for the Prince. He visited every 
notable spot in the brilliant and curious town where 
one spoke first in French, and English only as an 
afterthought; where even the blind beggar appeals 
to the charitable in two languages; where the citizens 
ride in up-to-date motor-cars and the visitors in the 



74 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

high-slung, swing-shaped horse calache; where the 
traffic takes the French side of the road; where the 
shovel hats and cassocks of priests are as common- 
place as everyday; where the vivacity of France is 
fused into the homely good-fellowship of the Colon- 
ial in a manner quite irresistible. 

He began Friday in a wonderful crimson room in 
the Provincial Parliament building, where he re- 
ceived addresses in French, and answered them in the 
same tongue. 

It was a remarkable room, this glowing chamber 
set in the handsome Parliament house that looks 
down over a sweep of grass, the hipped roofs and the 
pinnacles of the town to the St. Lawrence. It was 
a great room with a floor of crimson and walls of 
crimson and white. Over the mellow oak that made 
a backing to the Prince's dias was a striking picture 
of Champlain looking out from the deck of his 
tiny sloop The Gift of God to the shore upon which 
Quebec was to rise. 

The people in that chamber were not less colour- 
ful than the room itself. Bright dresses, the antique 
robes of Les Membres du Conseil Executif, the vio- 
let and red of clerics, with the blue, red and khaki of 
fighting men were on the floor and in the mellow 
oak gallery. 

Two addresses were read to His Royal Highness, 
twice, first in French and then in English, and each 
address in each language was prefaced by his list of 
titles — a long list, sonorous enough in French, but 
with an air of thirdly and lastly when oft repeated. 
One could imagine his relief when the fourth Earl 



Quebec 75 



of Carrick had been negotiated, and he was steer- 
ing safely for the Lord of the Isles. A strain on 
any man, especially when one of the readers' pince- 
nez began to contract some of the deep feeling of its 
master, and to slide off at every comma, to be thrust 
back with his ever-deepening emotion. 

The Prince answered in one language, and that 
French, and the surprise and delight of his hearers 
was profound. They felt that he had paid them 
the most graceful of compliments, and his fluency 
as well as his happiness of expression filled them with 
enthusiasm. He showed, too, that he recognized 
what French Canada had done in the war by his 
reference to the Vingtdeuxieme Battalion, whose 
" conduite intrepide " he had witnessed in France. 
It was a touch of knowledge that was certainly well 
chosen, for the province of Quebec, which sent forty 
thousand men by direct enlistment to the war, has, 
thanks to the obscurantism of politics, received 
rather less than its due. 

From the atmosphere of governance the Prince 
passed to the atmosphere of the seminary, driving 
down the broad Grand Allee to the University of 
Laval, called after the first Bishop of Quebec and 
Canada. It has been since its foundation not merely 
the fountain head of Christianity on the American 
continent, but the armoury of science, in which all the 
arts of forestry, agriculture, medicine and the like 
were put at the service of the settler in his fight 
against the primitive wilds. 

In the bleached and severe corridors of this great 
building the Prince examined many historic pictures 



76 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

of Canada's past, including a set of photographs of 
his own father's visit to the city and university. He 
also went from Laval to the Archbishop's Palace, 
where the Cardinal, a humorous, wise, virile old 
prelate in scarlet, showed him pictures of Queen 
Victoria and others of his ancestors, and stood by his 
side in the Grand Saloon while he held a reception of 
many clerics, professors and visitors. 

The afternoon was given to the battlefield, where 
he unfurled a Union Jack to inaugurate the beauti- 
ful park that extends over the whole area. 

The beauty of this park is a very real thing. It 
hangs over the St. Lawrence with a sumptuous air 
of spaciousness. Leaning over the granite balus- 
trade, one can look down on the tiny Wolfe's cove, 
where three thousand British crept up in the black- 
ness of the night to disconcert the French com- 
mander. 

It is not a very imposing slope, and a modern 
army might take it in its stride. Across the formal 
grass of the park itself the learned trace the lines 
of England and of France. 

At the town end there is a slight hill above a dip. 
The British were in the dip, France was on the hill. 
That hill lost the battle. It placed the French be- 
tween the British and the guns of the Citadel in days 
when there was neither aerial observation nor in- 
direct fire. 

A wind, as on the day of the battle, was blowing 
while the Prince was on the field. The British fired 
one volley, and the smoke from their black powder 
was blown into the faces of the French. Bewildered 



Quebec 77 



by the dense cloud, uncertain of what was in the 
heart of it, the French broke and fled. In twenty 
minutes Canada was won. 

There is a plain monument to mark the exact spot 
where Wolfe fell; the Prince placed a wreath upon 
it, as he had placed wreaths on the monuments of 
Champlain and Montcalm earlier, and as he did later 
at the monument Aux Braves on the field of Foye, 
which commemorates the dead of both races who 
fell in the battle when Murray, a year after Wolfe's 
victory, endeavoured to loosen the grip the French 
besiegers were tightening round Quebec, and was 
defeated, though he held the city. 

On the Plains of Abraham — it has no romantic 
significance, Abraham was merely a farmer who 
owned the land at the time of the battle — French 
and English were again gathered in force, but in a 
different manner. 

It was a bright and friendly gathering of Cana- 
dians, who no longer permitted a difference of 
tongue to interfere with their amity. It was also 
a gathering of men and women and children (Quebec 
is the province of the quiverful), notably vigorous, 
well-dressed and prosperous. 

The thing to remark here, as well as in all the 
gatherings of the people of this city, was the absence 
of dinginess and dowdiness that goes with poverty. 
In the great mass of stone houses, pretty brick and 
wood villas, and apartment " houses," the upper flats 
of which are reached by curving iron Jacob stair- 
ways, that make habitable Quebec there are patches 
of cramped wooden houses, each built under the 



78 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

architectural stimulus of the packing-case, though 
rococo little porches and scalloped roofs add a wed- 
ding-cake charm to the poverty of size and design. 
But though there are these small but not mean 
houses, there appear to be no poor people. 

All those on the Plains had an independent and 
self-supporting air (as, indeed, every person has in 
Canada), and they gave the Prince a reception of a 
hearty and affable kind, as he declared this fine park 
the property of the city, and made the citizens free 
of its historic acreage for all time. 

From the Plains His Royal Highness went by car 
to the huge new railway bridge that spans the St. 
Lawrence a few miles above the town. It was a 
long ride through comely lanes, by quiet farmsteads 
and small habitant villages. At all places where 
there was a nucleus of human life, men and women, 
but particularly the children, came out to their fences 
with flags to shout and wave a greeting. 

At the bridge station were two open cars, and on 
to the raised platform of one of these the Prince 
mounted, while " movie " men stormed the other 
car, and a number of ordinary human beings joined 
them. This special train was then passed slowly 
under the giant steel girders and over the central 
span, which is longer than any span the Forth 
Bridge can boast. As the train travelled forward 
the Prince showed his eagerness for technical detail, 
and kept the engineers by his side busy with a stream 
of questions. 

The bridge is not only a superb example of the 
art of the engineer, perhaps the greatest example 



Quebec 79 



the twentieth century can yet show, but it is a monu- 
ment to the courage and tenacity of man. Twice 
the great central span was floated up-stream from 
the building yards, only to collapse and sink into the 
St. Lawrence at the moment it was being lifted into 
place. Though these failures caused loss of life, the 
designers persisted, and the third attempt brought 
success. 

There was, one supposes, a ceremonial idea con- 
nected with this function. His Royal Highness cer- 
tainly unveiled two tablets at either end of the bridge 
by jerking cords that released the covering Union 
Jack. But this ritual was second to the ceremonial 
of the " movies." 

The " movies " went over the top in a grand at- 
tack. They put down a box barrage close up against 
the Prince's platform, and at a distance of two feet, 
not an inflection of his face, nor a movement of his 
head, escaped the unwinking and merciless eye of the 
camera. 

The " movie " men declare that the Prince is 
the best " fil-lm " actor living, since he is absolutely 
unstudied in manner; but it would have taken a 
Douglas Fairbanks of a super-breed to remain unem- 
barrassed in the face of that cold line of lenses thrust 
close up to his medal ribbons. And in the film he 
shows his feelings in characteristic movements of lips 
and hands. 

The men who did not take movies, the men with 
plain cameras, the " still " men, were also active. 
Not to be outdone by their comrades with the ma- 
chine-gun action, they sprang from the car at inter- 



8o Westward with the Prince of Wales 

vals, ran along the footway, and snapped the party 
as the train drew level with them. 

It was a field day for cameras, but enthusiastic 
people also counted. Men and women had 
clambered up the hard, stratified rock of the cuttings 
that carry the line to the bridge, and they were also 
standing under the bridge on the slopes, and on the 
flats by the river. They were cheering, and — yes, 
they were busy with their cameras also — cameras 
cannot be evaded in Canada, even in the wilds. 

One had the impression, from the difficult perches 
on which people were to be found, that wherever 
the Prince would go in Canada, to whatever lonely 
or difficult spot his travels would lead him, he would 
always find a Canadian man, and possibly a Canadian 
woman standing waiting or clinging to precarious 
holds, glad to be there, so long as he (or she) had 
breath to cheer and a free hand to wave a flag. 
And this impression was confirmed by the story of 
the next months. 

IV 

Saturday, August 23, was supposed to give His 
Royal Highness the half-day holiday which is the 
due of any worker. That half day was peculiarly 
Canadian. 

The business of the morning was one of singular 
charm. The Prince visited the Convent of the 
Ursulines, to which in the old days wounded Mont- 
calm was taken, and in whose quiet chapel his body 
lies. 

The nuns are cloistered and do not open their 



Quebec 81 



doors to visitors, but on this day they welcomed the 
Prince with an eagerness that was altogether de- 
lightful. They showed him through their serene 
yet bare reception rooms, and with pride placed be- 
fore him the skull of Montcalm, which they keep in 
their recreation room, together with a host of his- 
toric documents dealing with the struggles of those 
distant days. 

The party was taken through the nuns' chapel, and 
sent on with smiles to the public chapel to look on 
Montcalm's tomb, originally a hole in the chapel 
fabric torn by British shells. The nuns could not go 
into that chapel. " We are cloistered," they told 
us. 

These child-like nuns, with their serene and smil- 
ing faces, were overjoyed to receive His Royal High- 
ness and anxious to convey to him their good will. 

" We cannot go to England — we cannot leave 
our house — but our hearts are always with you, 
and there are none more loyal than us, and none 
more earnest in teaching loyalty to all the girls who 
come to us to study. Yes, we teach it in French, 
but what does that matter? We can express the 
Canadian spirit just as well in that language." So 
said a very vivid and practical little nun to me, and 
she was anxious that England should realize how 
dear they felt the bond. 

The Prince's afternoon " off " was spent out of 
Quebec at the beautiful village of St. Anne's 
Beaupre, where, set in lovely surroundings, there is 
a miraculous shrine to St. Anne. The Prince visited 
the beautiful basilica, and saw the forest of sticks 



82 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

and crutches left behind as tokens of their cure by 
generations of sufferers. 

News of his visit had got abroad, and when he 
left the shrine in company of the clergy, he was sur- 
rounded by a big crowd who restricted all movement 
by their cheerful importunity. A local photo- 
grapher, rising to the occasion, refused to let His 
Royal Highness escape until he had taken an historic 
snap. Not merely a snap of the Prince and the 
priests with him, but of as many of the citizens of 
Beaupre as he could get into a wide angle lense. 
This was a tremendous occasion, and he yelled at the 
top of his voice to the people to : 

" Come and be photographed with the Prince. 
Come and be taken with your future King." 

Taken with their future King, the people of 
Beaupre were entirely disinclined to let him go. 
They crowded round him so that it was only force 
that enabled his entourage to clear a tactful way to 
his car. Even in the car the driver found himself 
faced with all the opportunities of the chauffeur 
of the Juggernaut with none of his convictions. The 
car was hemmed in by the crowd, and the crowd 
would not give way. 

It is possible that at this jolly crisis somebody 
mentioned the Prince's need for tea, and at the men- 
tion of this solemn and inexplicable British rite the 
crowd gave way, and the car got free. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MOBILE HOTEL DE LUXE: THE ROYAL 
TRAIN 



ON Sunday, August 24th, His Royal Highness 
came under the sway of that benevolent 
despot in the Kingdom of Efficiency, the 
Canadian Pacific Railway. 

He motored out along a road that Quebec is proud 
of, because it has a reputable surface for automobiles 
in a world of natural earth tracks, through delight- 
ful country to a small station which a Gallic air, 
Three Rivers. Here he boarded the Royal Train. 

It was a remarkable train. Not merely did its 
construction, length, tonnage and ultimate mileage 
set up new records, but in it the idealist's dream of 
perfection in travelling came true. 

It might be truer to say the Royal Party did not 
take the train, it took them. As each member of 
the party mounted into his compartment, or Pull- 
man car, he at once ceased to concern himself with 
his own well-being. To think of oneself was un- 
necessary. The C.P.R. had not only arranged to 
do the thinking, but had also arranged to do it bet- 
ter. 

The external facts concerning the train were but 
a part of its wonder. And the minor part. It was 
the largest train of its kind to accomplish so great 

83 



84 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

a single run — it weighed over a thousand tons, and 
travelled nearly ten thousand miles. It was a fifth 
of a mile in length. Its ten splendid cars were all 
steel. Some of them were ordinary sleepers, some 
were compartment and drawing-room cars. Those 
for the Prince and his Staff were sumptuous private 
cars with state-rooms, dining-rooms, kitchens, bath- 
rooms, and cosy observation rooms and platforms, 
beautifully fitted and appointed. 

The train was a modern hotel strayed accidentally 
on to wheels. It had its telephone system; its own 
electricity; its own individually controlled central 
heat. It had a laundry service for its passengers, 
and its valets always on the spot to renew the crease 
of youth in all trousers. It had its own newspaper, 
or, rather, bulletin, by which all on board learnt the 
news of the external world twice a day, no matter 
in what wild spot the train happened to be. It had 
its dark-room for photographers, its dispensary for 
the doctor and its untiring telegraph expert to handle 
all wired messages, including the correspondents' 
cables. It had its dining-rooms and kitchens and 
its staff of first-class chefs, who worked miracles of 
cuisine in the small space of their kitchen, giving 
over a hundred people three meals a day that no 
hotel in London could exceed in style, and no hotel 
in England could hope to equal in abundance. 
It carried baggage, and transferred it to Government 
Houses or hotels, and transferred it back to its cars 
and baggage vans in a manner so perfect that one 
came to look upon the matter almost as a process of 
nature, and not as a breathless phenomenon. 



The Mobile Hotel De Luxe 85 

It was the train de luxe, but it was really more 
than that. It was a train handled by experts from 
Mr. A. B. Calder, who represented the President of 
the Company, down to the cleaning boy, who swept 
up the cars, and they were experts of a curious qual- 
ity of their own. 

Whatever the Canadian Pacific Railway is (and it 
has its critics), there can be no doubt that, as an 
organization, it captures the loyalty, as it calls forth 
all the keenness and ability of its servants. It is 
something that quickens their imagination and stimu- 
lates their enthusiasm. There was something warm 
and invigorating about the way each man set up 
within himself a counsel of perfection — which he 
intended to exceed. Waiters, negro car porters, 
brakemen, secretaries — every man on that staff of 
sixty odd determined that his department was going 
to be a living example, not of what he could do, but 
of what the C.P.R. could do. 

The esprit de corps was remarkable. Mr. Calder 
told us at the end of the trip that as far as the staff 
working of the train was concerned he need not have 
been in control. He had not issued a single order, 
nor a single reprimand in the three months. The 
men knew their work perfectly; they did it perfectly. 

When one thinks of a great organization animated 
from the lowest worker to the President by so lively 
and extraordinarily human a spirit of loyalty that 
each worker finds delight in improving on instruc- 
tions, one must admit that it has the elements of 
greatness in it. 

My own impression after seeing it working and 



86 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the work it has done, after seeing the difficulties it 
has conquered, the districts it has opened up, the 
towns it has brought into being, is that, as an or- 
ganization, the Canadian Pacific Railway is great, 
not merely as a trading concern, but as an Empire- 
building factor. Its vision has been big beyond its 
own needs, and the Dominion today owes not a little 
to the great men of the C.P.R., who were big- 
minded enough to plan, not only for themselves, but 
also for all Canada. 

And the big men are still alive. In Quebec we 
had the good fortune to meet Lord Shaughnessy, 
whose acute mind was the very soul of the C.P.R. 
until he retired from the Presidency a short time ago, 
and Mr. Edward W. Beatty, who has succeeded 
him. 

Lord Shaughnessy may be a retired lion, but he is 
by no means a dead one. A quiet man of powerful 
silences, whose eyes can be ruthless, and his lips 
wise. A man who appears disembodied on first in- 
troduction, for one overlooks the rest of him under 
the domination of his head and eyes. 

The best description of Mr. Beatty lies in the first 
question one wants to ask him, which is, " Are you 
any relation to the Admiral? " 

The likeness is so remarkable that one is sure it 
cannot be accidental. It is accidental, and there- 
fore more remarkable. It is the Admiral's face 
down to the least detail of feature, though it is a 
trifle younger. There is the same neat, jaunty air 
— there is even the same cock of the hat over the 
same eye. There is the same sense of compact 



The Mobile Hotel De Luxe 87 

power concealed by the same spirit of whimsical 
dare-devilry. There is the same capacity, the same 
nattiness, the same humanness. There is the same 
sense of abnormality that a man looking so young 
should command an organization so enormous, and 
the same recognition that he is just the man to do it. 

Both these men are impressive. They are big 
men, but then so are all the men who have control 
in the C.P.R. They are more than that, they can 
inspire other men with their own big spirit. We met 
many heads of departments in the C.P.R. , and we 
felt that in all was the same quality. Mr. Calder, 
as he began, " A. B." as he soon became, was the 
one we came in contact with most, and he was typical 
of his service. 

" A. B." was not merely our good angel, but our 
good friend from the first. Not merely did he 
smooth the way for us, but he made it the jolliest 
and most cheery way in the world. He is a bundle 
of strange qualities, all good. He is Puck, with 
the brain of an administrator. The king of story 
tellers, with an unfaltering instinct for organization. 
A poet, and a mimic and a born comedian, plus a 
will that is never flurried, a diplomacy that never 
rasps, and a capacity for the routine of railway work 
that is — C.P.R. A man of big heart, big human- 
ness, and big ability, whom we all loved and valued 
from the first meeting. 

And, over all, he is a C.P.R. man, the type of man 
that organization finds service for, and is best served 
by them; an example that did most to impress us 
with a sense of the organization's greatness. 



88 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ii 

If I have written much concerning the C.P.R., it 
is because I feel that, under the personality of His 
Royal Highness himself, the success of the tour 
owes much to the care and efficiency that organiza- 
tion exerted throughout its course, and also because 
for three months the C.P.R. train was our home and 
the backbone of everything we did. If you like, 
that is the chief tribute to the organization. We 
spent three months confined more or less to a single 
carriage; we travelled over all kinds of line and 
country, and under all manner of conditions; and 
after those three long months we left the train still 
impressed by the C.P.R. , still warm in our friendship 
for it — perhaps, indeed, warmer in our regard. 

There are not many railways that could stand 
that continuous test. 

Of the ten cars in the train, the Prince of Wales 
occupied the last, " Killarney," a beautiful car, 
eighty-two feet long, its interior finished in satin- 
wood, and beautifully lighted by the indirect system. 
The Prince had his bedroom, with an ordinary bed, 
dining-room and bathroom. There was a kitchen 
and pantry for his special chef. The observation 
compartment was a drawing-room with settees, and 
arm-chairs and a gramophone, while in addition to 
to the broad windows there was a large, brass-railed 
platform at the rear, upon which he could sit and 
watch the scenery (search-lights helped him at 
night), and from which he held a multitude of im- 
promptu receptions. 



The Mobile Hotel De Luxe 89 

u Cromarty," another beautiful car, was occupied 
by the personal Staff; "Empire," "Chinook" and 
" Chester " by personal and C.P.R. staff. The next 
car, " Canada," was the beautiful dining car; " Car- 
narvon," the next, a sleeping car, was occupied by the 
correspondents and photographers; " Renown" be- 
longed to the particularly efficient C.P.R. police, 
who went everywhere with the train, and patrolled 
the track if it stopped at night. In front of " Re- 
nown " were two baggage cars with the 225 pieces 
of baggage the retinue carried. 

At Three Rivers a very cheery crowd wished His 
Royal Highness bon voyage. The whole town 
turned out, and over-ran the pretty grass plot that 
is a feature in every Canadian station, in order to see 
the Prince. 

We ran steadily down the St. Lawrence through 
pretty country towards Toronto. All the stations 
we passed were crowded, and though the train in- 
variably went through at a good pace that did not 
seem to matter to the people, though they had come 
a long distance in order to catch just this fleeting 
glimpse of the train that carried him. 

Sometimes the train stopped for water, or to 
change engines at the end of the section of 133 
miles. The people then gathered about the rear of 
the train, and the Prince had an opportunity of chat- 
ting with them and shaking hands with many. 

At some halts he left the train to stroll on the 
platform, and on these occasions he invariably talked 
with the crowd, and gave " candies " to the children. 
There was no difficulty at all in approaching him. 



90 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

At one tiny place, Outremont, one woman came to 
him, and said that she felt she already knew him, 
because her husband had met him in France. That 
fact immediately moved the Prince to sympathy. 
Not only did he spend some minutes talking with 
her, but he made a point of referring to the incident 
in his speech at Toronto the next day, to emphasize 
the feeling he was experiencing of having come to a 
land that was almost his own, thanks to his com- 
radeship with Canadians overseas. 

Not only during the day was the whole route of 
the train marked by crowds at stations, and individ- 
ual groups in the countryside, but even during the 
night these crowds and groups were there. 

As we swept along there came through the win- 
dows of our sleeping-car the ghosts of cheers, as a 
crowd on a station or a gathering at a crossing 
saluted the train. The cheer was gone in the dis- 
tance as soon as it came, but to hear these cheers 
through the night was to be impressed by the gener- 
osity and loyalty of these people. They had stayed 
up late, they had even travelled far to give one cheer 
only. But they had thought it worth while. Mon- 
treal, which we passed through in the dark, woke us 
with a hearty salute that ran throughout the length 
of our passing through that great city, and so it went 
on through the night and into the morning, when we 
woke to find ourselves slipping along the shores of 
Lake Ontario and into the outskirts of Toronto. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE CITY OF CROWDS. TORONTO: ONTARIO 



TORONTO is a city of many names. You 
can call it " The Boston of Canada," be- 
cause of its aspiration to literature, the 
theatre and the arts. You can call it " The Second 
City of Canada," because the fact is incontestable. 
You can call it " The Queen City," because others 
do, though, like the writer, you are unable to find 
the reason why you should. You can say of it, as 
the Westerners do, " Oh — Toronto! " with very 
much the same accent that the British dramatist 
reserves for the censor of plays. But though it al- 
ready had its host of names, Toronto, to us, was 
the City of Crowds. 

Toronto has interests and beauties. It has its 
big, natural High Park. It has its charming resi- 
dential quarters in Rosedale and on The Hill. It 
has its beautiful lagoon on the lakeside. It has its 
Yonge Street, forty miles straight. It has the tallest 
building in the Empire, and some of the largest 
stores in the Empire. It is busy and bright and 
brisk. But we found we could not see it for crowds. 
Or, rather, at first we could not see it for crowds. 
Later a good Samaritan took us for a pell-mell tour 
in a motor-car, and we saw a chauffeur's eye view of 

91 



92 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

it. Even then we saw much of it over the massed 
soft hats of Canada. 

We had become inured to crowds. We had seen 
big, bustling, eager, hearty, good-humoured throngs 
from St. John's to Quebec. But even that hardening 
had not proofed us against the mass and enthusias- 
tic violence of the crowd that Toronto turned out to 
greet the Prince, and continued to turn out to meet 
him during the days he was there. 

On the early morning of Monday, August 25th, in 
that weather that was already being called " Prince 
of Wales' weather," the Prince stepped " ashore " 
at the Government House siding, outside Toronto. 
There was a skirmishing line of the waiting city 
flung out to this distant station — including some 
go-ahead flappers with autograph books to sign. It 
was, however, one of those occasions when the Prince 
was considered to be wrapped in a robe of invisibility 
until he had been to Government House and started 
from there to drive inland to the city and its recep- 
tions. 

A quick automobile rush — and, by the way, it 
will be noticed that the Continent of Hustle always 
uses the long word for the short, " automobile " for 
"car," "elevator" for "lift," and so on — to the 
Government House, placed the Prince on a legal 
footing, and he was ready to enter the city. 

Government House is remarkable for the fact that 
it grew a garden in a single night. It is a comely 
building of rough-dressed stone, standing in the park- 
like surroundings of the Rosedale suburb, but in the 
absence of princes its forecourt is merely a desert 



The City of Crowds 93 

of grey stone granules. When His Royal Highness 
arrived it was a garden of an almost brilliant abun- 
dance. There were green lawns, great beds packed 
wantonly with the brightest flowers, while trees, 
palms and flowering shrubs crowded the square in 
luxuriance. A marvel of a garden. A realist 
policeman, after his first gasp, bent down to examine 
the green of the lawn, and rose with a Kipps expres- 
sion on his face and with the single word " Fake " 
on his lips. 

The vivid lawn was green cocoanut matting, the 
beds were cunning arrangements of flowers in pots, 
and from pots the trees and shrubs flourished. It 
was a garden artificial and even more marvellous 
than we had thought. 

The Prince rode through Rosedale to the town. 
The crowd began outside Government House gates. 
It was a polite and brightly dressed crowd, for it 
was drawn from the delightful houses that made 
islands in the uninterrupted lawns that, with the 
graceful trees, formed the borders of the winding 
roads through which he went. Rosedale was once 
forest on the shores of the old Ontario Lake; the 
lake has receded three miles and more, but the 
builders of the city have dealt kindly with the forest, 
and have touched it as little as they could, so that 
the old trees blend with the modern lawns to give 
the new homes an air of infinite charm. 

As the Prince drove deeper into the city the crowds 
thickened, so that when he arrived in the virile, pur- 
poseful commercial streets, the sidewalks could no 
longer contain the mass. They are broad and effi- 



94 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

cient streets, striking through the town arrow- 
straight, and giving to the eye superb vistas. But 
broad though they were, they could not accommo- 
date sightseeing Toronto, anc the crowd encroached 
upon the driveway, much to the disgust of many 
little boys, who, with their race's contempt for death 
by automobile, were running or cycling beside the 
Royal car in their determination to get the maximum 
of Prince out of a short visit. 

The crowd went upward from the roadway also. 
We had come into our first city of sky-climbing build- 
ings. One of these shoots up some twenty stories, 
but though this is the tallest " yet," it is surrounded 
by some considerable neighbours that give the streets 
great ranges upwards as well as forward. The 
windows of these great buildings were packed with 
people, and through the canopy of flags that fluttered 
on all the route they sent down their cheers to join 
the welcome on the ground floor. 

It was through such crowds that the Prince drove 
to a greater crowd that was gathered about the 
Parliament Buildings. 



II 

The site of the Provincial Parliament Buildings is, 
as with all these Western cities, very beautifully 
planned. It is set in the gracious Queen's Park, that 
forms an avenue of green in the very heart of the 
town. About the park are the buildings of Toronto 
University, and the avenue leads down to the digni- 
fied old law schools at Osgoode Hall. The Cana- 



The City of Crowds 95 

dians show a sense of appropriate artistry always in 
the grouping of their public buildings — although, of 
course, they have had the advantage of beginning 
before ground-rents and other interests grew too 
strong for public endeavour. 

The Parliament Buildings are of a ruddy sand- 
stone, in a style slightly railway-station Renaissance. 
They were draped with flags down to the vivid 
striped platform before the building upon which the 
reception was held. Great masses of people and 
many ranks of soldiers filled the lawns before the 
platform, while to the right was a great flower-bed 
of infants. A grand-stand was brimming over with 
school-kiddies ready to cheer at the slightest hint, to 
sing at command, and to wave flags at all times. 

It was a bustling reception from Toronto as par- 
liamentary capital of Ontario, and from Toronto 
the town. It was packed full of speeches and sing- 
ing from the children and from a Welsh choir — and 
Canada flowers Welsh choirs — and presentations 
from many societies, whose members, wearing the 
long silk buttonhole tabs stamped with the gold title 
of the guild or committee to which they belonged, 
came forward to augment the press on the platform. 

These silk tabs are an insignia of Canadian life. 
The Canadians have an infinite capacity for forming 
themselves into committees, and clubs, and orders of 
stout fellows, and all manner of gregarious associa- 
tions. And when any association shows itself in the 
sunlight, it distinguishes itself by tagging its mem- 
bers with long, coloured silk tabs. We never went 
out of sight of tabs on the whole of our trip. 



96 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

From the Parliament Buildings the Prince drove 
through the packed town to the Exhibition ground. 
We passed practically through the whole of the city 
in these two journeys, travelling miles of streets, 
yet all the way the mass of people was dense to a 
remarkable degree. Toronto, we knew, was sup- 
posed to have a population of 500,000 people, but 
long before we reached the end of the drive we be- 
gan to wonder how the city could possibly keep up 
the strength on the pavements without running out 
of inhabitants. It not only kept it up, but it sprang 
upon us the amazing sight of the Exhibition ground. 

In this long and wonderful drive there was but 
one stop. This was at the City Hall, a big, rough 
stone building with a soaring campanile. On the 
broad steps of the hall a host of wounded men in 
blue were grouped, as though in a grand-stand. 
The string of cars swerved aside so that the Prince 
could stop for a few minutes and chat with the men. 

His reception here was of overwhelming warmth ; 
men with all manner of hurts, men on crutches and 
in chairs stood up, or tried to stand up, to cheer him. 
It was in the truest sense a meeting of comrades, 
and when a one-legged soldier asked the Prince to 
pose for a photograph, he did it not merely willingly, 
but with a jolly and personal friendliness. 

The long road to the Exhibition passed through 
the busy manufacturing centre that has made 
Toronto famous and rich as a trading city, particu- 
larly as a trading city from which agricultural ma- 
chinery is produced. The Exhibition itself is part 
of its great commercial enterprise. It is the focus 



The City of Crowds 97 

for the whole of Ontario, and perhaps for the whole 
of Eastern Canada, of all that is up-to-date in the 
science of production. In the beautiful grounds that 
lie along the fringe of the inland sea that men have, 
for convenience' sake, called Lake Ontario, and in 
fine buildings in those grounds are gathered together 
exhibits of machinery, textiles, timber, seeds, cattle, 
and in fact everything concerned with the work of 
men in cities or on prairies, in offices or factories, 
farms or orchards. 

The Exhibition was breaking records for its 
visitors already, and the presence of the Prince en- 
abled it to break more. The vastness of the crowd 
in the grounds was aweing. The gathering of peo- 
ple simply obliterated the grass of the lawns and 
clogged the roads. 

When His Royal Highness had lunched with the 
administrators of the Exhibition, he came out to a 
bandstand and publicly declared the grounds opened. 
The crowd was not merely thick about the stand, but 
its more venturesome members climbed up among the 
committee and the camera-men, the latter working so 
strenuously and in such numbers that they gave the 
impression that they not only photographed every 
movement, but also every word the Prince uttered. 

The density of the crowd made retreat a problem. 
Police and Staff had to resolve themselves into human 
Tanks, and press a way by inches through the enthu- 
siastic throng to the car. The car itself was sur- 
rounded, and could only move at a crawl along the 
roads, and so slow was the going and so lively was 
the friendliness of the people, that His Royal High- 



98 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ness once and for all threw saluting overboard as a 
gesture entirely inadequate, and gave his response 
with a waving hand. The infection of goodwill, 
too, had caught hold of him, and not satisfied with 
his attitude, he sprang up in the car and waved stand- 
ing. In this manner, and with one of his Staff hold- 
ing him by the belt, he drove through and out of 
the grounds. 

It was a day so packed with extraordinary crowds, 
that we correspondents grew hopeless before them. 
We despaired of being able to convey adequately a 
sense of what was happening; " enthusiasm " was a 
hard-driven word that day and during the next two, 
and we would have given the world to find another 
for a change. 

Since I returned I have heard sceptical people say 
that the stories of these " great receptions " were 
vamped-up affairs, mere newspaper manufacture. I 
would like to have had some of those sceptics in 
Toronto with us on August 25th, 26th and 27th. It 
would have taught them a very convincing and stir- 
ring lesson. 

The crowds of the Exhibition ground were fol- 
lowed by crowds at the Public Reception, an " extra " 
which the Prince himself had added to his pro- 
gram. This was held at the City Hall. It had 
all the characteristics of these democratic and popu- 
lar receptions, only it was bigger. Policemen had 
been drawn about the City Hall, but when the peo- 
ple decided to go in, the police mattered very little. 
They were submerged by a sea of men and women 
that swept over them, swept up the big flight of 



The City of Crowds 99 

steps and engulfed the Prince in a torrent, every 
individual particle of which was bent on shaking 
hands. It was a splendidly-tempered crowd, but it 
was determined upon that handshake. And it had 
it. It was at Toronto that, as the Prince phrased 
it, " My right hand was ' done in. 1 " This was how 
Toronto did it in. 

in 

The visit was not all strenuous affection. There 
were quiet backwaters in which His Royal Highness 
obtained some rest, golfing and dancing. One such 
moment was when on this day he crossed to the 
Yacht Club, an idyllic place, on the sandspit that 
encloses the lagoon. 

This club, set in the vividly blue waters of the 
great lake, is a little gem of beauty with its smooth 
lawns, pretty buildings and fine trees. It is even 
something more, for every handful of loam on which 
the lawns and trees grow was transported from the 
mainland to make fruitful the arid sand of the spit. 
The Prince had tea on the lawn, while he watched 
the scores of brisk little boats that had followed 
him out and hung about awaiting his return like a 
genial guard of honour. 

There was always dancing in honour of the Prince, 
and always a great deal of expectation as to who 
would be the lucky partners. His partners, as I 
have said, had their photographs published in the 
papers the next day. Even those who were not so 
lucky urged their cavaliers to keep as close to him 
as possible on the ball-room floor, so every inflexion 



ioo Westward with the Prince of Wales 

of the Prince could be watched, though not all were 
so far gone as an adoring young thing in one town 
(NOT Toronto), who hung on every movement, 
and who cried to her partner in accents of awe: 

" I've heard him speak! I've heard him speak! 
He says ' Yes ' just like an ordinary man. Isn't 
it wonderful ! " 

On Tuesday, the 25th, the Yacht Club was the 
scene of one of the brightest of dances, following a 
very happy reunion between the Prince and his com- 
rades of the war. Some hundreds of officers of all 
grades were gathered together by General Gunn, the 
CO. of the District, from the many thousands in 
Ontario, and these entertained the Prince at din- 
ner at the Club. It was a gathering both significant 
and impressive. Every one of the officers wore not 
merely the medals of Overseas service, but every 
one wore a distinction gained on the field. 

It was an epitome of Canada's effort in the war. 
It was a collection of virile young men drawn from 
the lawyer's office and the farm, from the desk in- 
doors and avocations in the open, from the very law 
schools and even the University campus. In the 
big dining-hall, hung with scores of boards in Ger- 
man lettering, trench-signs, directing posts to billets, 
drinking water and the like, that had been captureti 
by the very men who were then dining, one got a 
sense of the vivid capacity and alertness that made 
Canada's contribution to the Empire fighting forces 
so notable, and more, that will make Canada's con- 
tribution to the future of the world so notable. 

There was no doubt, too, that, though these self- 



The City of Crowds 101 

assured young men are perfectly competent to stand 
on their own feet in all circumstances, their visit to 
the Old Country — or, as even the Canadian-born 
call it, " Home " — has, even apart from the lessons 
of fighting, been useful to them, and, through them, 
will be useful to Canada. 

" Leaves in England were worth while," one said. 
" I've come back here with a new sense of values. 
Canada's a great country, but we are a little in the 
rough. We can teach you people a good many 
things, but there are a good many we can learn from 
you. We haven't any tradition. Oh, not all your 
traditions are good ones, but many are worth while. 
You have a more dignified social sense than we have, 
and a political sense too. And you have a culture 
we haven't attained yet. You've given us not a 
standard — we could read that up — but a liking for 
social life, bigger politics, books and pictures and 
music, and all that sort of thing that we had missed 
here — and been quite unaware that we had 
missed." 

And another chimed in: 

" That's what we miss in Canada, the theatres 
and the concerts and the lectures, and the whole 
boiling of a good time we had in London — the big 
sense of being Metropolitan that you get in Eng- 
land, and not here. Well, not yet. We were 
rather prone to the parish-pump attitude before the 
war, but going over there has given us a bigger out- 
look. We can see the whole world now, you know. 
London's a great place — it's an education in the 
citizenship of the universe." 



102 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

That's a point, too. London and Britain have 
been revealed to them as friendly places and the 
homes of good friends — though I must make an 
exception of one seaport town in England which is 
a byword among Canadians for bad treatment. 
England was the place where a multitude of people 
conspired to give the Canadians a good time, and 
they have returned with a practical knowledge of the 
good feeling of the English, and that is bound to 
make for mutual understanding. 

It must not be thought that Toronto — or other 
cities in Canada — is without theatres or places of 
recreation. There are several good theatres and 
music-halls in Toronto — more in this city than in 
any other. These theatres are served by American 
companies of the No. i touring kind. English 
actors touring America usually pay the city a visit, 
while quite frequently new plays are " tried out " 
here before opening in New York. 

But apart from a repertory company, which 
plays drawing-room comedies with an occasional 
dash of high-brow, Toronto and Canada depend on 
outside, that is American, sources for the theatre, 
and though the standard of touring companies may 
be high in the big Eastern towns, it is not as high as 
it should be, and in towns further West the shows 
are of that rather streaky nature that one connects 
with theatrical entertainment at the British seaside 
resorts. 

The immense distances are against theatrical en- 
terprises, of course, but in spite of them one has a 
feeling that the potentialities of the theatre, as with 



The City of Crowds 103 

everything in the Dominion, are great for the right 
man. 

Toronto is better off musically than other cities, 
but even Toronto depends very much for its sym- 
phony and its vocal concerts, as for its opera, on 
America. Music is intensely popular, and gramo- 
phones, pianos and mechanical piano-players have a 
great sale. 

The " movie " show is the great industry of 
amusement all over the Dominion. Even the 
smallest town has its picture palace, the larger towns 
have theatres which are palaces indeed in their ap- 
pointments, and a multitude of them. In many the 
" movie " show is judiciously blended with vaude- 
ville turns, a mixture which seems popular. 

Book shops are rarities. In a great town such 
as Toronto I was only able to find one definite book 
shop, and that not within easy walk of my hotel. 
Even that shop dealt in stationery and the like to 
help things along, though its books were very much 
up to date, many of them (by both English and 
American authors) published by the excellent 
Toronto publishing houses. All the recognized 
leaders among English and American writers, and 
even Admirals and Generals turned writers, were on 
sale, though the popular market is the Zane Grey 
type of book. 

The reason there are few book shops is that the 
great stores — like Eaton's and Simpon's — have 
book departments, and very fine ones too, and that 
for general reading the Canadians are addicted to 
newspapers and mazagines, practically all the latter 



104 Westward with the Prince of Wales, 

American, which are on sale everywhere, in tobac- 
conists, drug stores, hotel loggias, and on special 
street stands generally run by a returned soldier. 
English papers of any sort are rarely seen on sale, 
though all the big American dailies are common- 
place, while only occasionally the Windsor, Strand, 
London, and the new Hutchinson' s Magazines 
shyly rear British heads over their clamorous Amer- 
ican brothers. 

IV 

Tuesday, August 26th, was a day dedicated to 
quieter functions. The Prince's first visits were to 
the hospitals. 

Toronto, which likes to do things with a big ges- 
ture, has attacked the problem of hospital building in 
a spacious manner. The great General Hospital is 
planned throughout to give an air of roominess and 
breadth. 

The Canadians certainly show a sense of architec- 
ture, and in building the General Hospital they re- 
fused to follow the Morgue School, which seems to 
be responsible for so many hospital and primary 
school designs. The Toronto Hospital is a fine 
building of many blocks set about green lawns, and 
with lawns and trees in the quadrangles. The ap- 
pointments are as nearly perfect as men can make 
them, and every scientific novelty is employed in the 
fight against wounds and sickness. Hospitals appear 
most generally used in Canada, people of all classes 
being treated there for illnesses that in Britain are 
treated at home. 



The City of Crowds 10? 

His Royal Highness visited and explored the whole 
of the great General Hospital, stopping and chatting 
with as many of the wounded soldiers who were then 
housed in it, as time allowed. He also paid a visit to 
the Children's Hospital cfose by. This was an item 
on the program entirely his own. Hearing of the 
hospital, he determined to visit it, having first paved 
the way for his visit by sending the kiddies a large 
assortment of toys. This hospital, with its essen- 
tially modern clinic, was thoroughly explored before 
the Prince left in a mist of cheers from the kiddies, 
whose enormous awe had melted during the acquain- 
tance. 

The afternoon was given over to the colourful 
ceremony in the University Hall, when the LL.D. 
degree of the University was bestowed upon His 
Royal Highness. In a great, grey-stone hall that 
stands on the edge of the delightful Queen's Park, 
where was gathered an audience of dons in robes, 
and ladies in bright dresses, with naval men and khaki 
men to bring up the glowing scheme, the Prince in 
rose-coloured robes received the degree and signed 
the roll of the University. Under the clear light 
of the glass roof the scene had a dignity and charm 
that placed it high among the striking pictures of the 
tour. 

It was a quieter day, but, nevertheless, it was a 
day of crowds also, the people thronging all the 
routes in their unabatable numbers, showing that 
crescendo of friendliness which was to reach its great- 
est strength on the next day. 



io6 Westward with the Prince of Wales 



The crowds of Toronto, already astonishing, went 
beyond mere describing on Wednesday, August 27th. 

There were several functions set down for this 
day; only two matter: the review of the War Veter- 
ans in the Exhibition grounds, and the long drive 
through the residential areas of the city. 

Some hint of what the crowd in the Exhibition 
grounds was like was given to us as we endeavoured 
to wriggle our car through the masses of other auto- 
mobiles, mobile or parked, that crowded the way 
to the grounds. We had already been impressed 
by the almost inordinate number of motor-cars in 
Canada : the number of cars in Toronto terrified 
us. 

When we looked on the thousands of cars in the 
city we knew why the streets had to be broad and 
straight and long. In no other way could they ac- 
commodate all that rushing traffic of the swift cars 
and the lean, torpedo-like trams that with a splendid 
service link up the heart of the town with the far out- 
lying suburbs. And even though the streets are broad 
the automobile is becoming too much for them. The 
habit of parking cars on the slant and by scores on 
both sides of the roadway (as well as down side 
roads and on vacant " lots ") is already restricting 
the carriage-way in certain areas. 

From the cars themselves there is less danger than 
in the London streets, for the rules of the road are 
strict, and the citizens keep them strictly. No car is 
allowed to pass a standing tram on the same side, for 



The City of Crowds 107 

example, and that rule with others is obeyed by all 
drivers. 

The multitude of cars, mainly open touring cars 
of the Buick and Overland type, though there are 
many Fords, or " flivvers," and an occasional Rolls- 
Royce, Napier or Panhand, thickened as we neared 
the Exhibition gates; and about them, in the side 
streets outside and in the avenues inside, they were 
parked by thousands. 

They gave the meanest indication of the numbers 
of people in the grounds. The lawns were covered 
with people. The halls of exhibits were full of peo- 
ple. The Joy City, where one can adventure into 
strange thrills from Coney Island, was full; the 
booths selling buttered corn cob, toasted pea-nuts, ice 
cream soda, and the rest, had hundreds of customers 
— and all these, we found, were the overflow. They 
had been crowded out from the real show, and were 
waiting outside in the hope of catching sight of the 
Prince as he made his round of the Exhibition. 

The show ground of the Exhibition is a huge 
arena. It is faced by a mighty grandstand, seating 
ten thousand people. Ten thousand people were 
sitting: the imagination bo'ggles at the computation 
of the number of those standing; they filled every 
foothold and clung to every step and projection. 
There were some — men in khaki, of course — who 
were risking their necks high up on the iron roof of 
the stand. 

In front of the stand is a great open space, backed 
by patriotic scenery, that acts as the stage for per- 
formances of the pageant kind. It was packed so 



io8 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

tightly with people that the movement of individuals 
was impossible. On this ground the war veterans 
should have been drawn up in ranks. In the begin- 
ning they were drawn up in ranks, but civilians, hav- 
ing filled up every gangway and passage, overflowed 
on to the field and filled that also. They were even 
clinging to the scenery and perched in the trees. 
The minimum figure for that crowd was given as 
fifty thousand. 

The reception given to the Prince was overwhelm- 
ing; that is the soberest word one can use. As he 
rode into the arena he was immediately surrounded 
by a cheering and cheery mass of people, who cut 
him off completely from his Staff. From the big 
stand there came an outburst of non-stop Canadian 
cheering, an affair of whistles, rattles, cheering and 
extempore noises, with the occasional bang of a fire- 
work, that was kept alive during the whole of the 
ceremony, one section of people taking it up when 
the first had tired itself out. 

With the crowd thick about him, His Royal High- 
ness strove to force his way to the platform on which 
he was to speak and to give medals, but movement 
could only be accomplished at a slow pace. As he 
neared the platform, indeed, movement ceased alto- 
gether, and Prince and crowd were wedged tight in 
a solid mass. The pressure of the crowd seems to 
have been too much for him, for there was a moment 
when it seemed he would be thrown from his horse. 
A " movie " man on the platform came to his rescue, 
and catching him round the shoulders pulled him into 
safety over the heads of the crowd. 



The City of Crowds 109 

On this platform and in a setting of enthusiasm 
that cannot be described adequately, he spoke and 
gave medals to what seemed an endless stream of 
brave Canadians. 

It was in the evening that he drove through the 
streets of the town, and I believe I am right in say- 
ing that he gave up other more restful engagements 
in order to undertake this ride that took several 
hours and was not less than twenty miles in length. 

Toronto is a city in which the civic ideal is very 
strong, and the concern not merely of the municipal- 
ity but of all the citizens. ■ It believes in beautiful 
and up-to-date town planning, and the elimination of 
slums, of which it now has not a single example. On 
his ride the Prince saw every facet of the city's 
activity. 

He drove through the beautiful avenues of Rose- 
dale, and through the not so beautiful but more ec- 
lectic area of The Hill. He went through the sub- 
urbs of charming, well-designed houses where the 
professional classes have their homes, and into the 
big, comely residential areas where the working peo- 
ple live. These areas are places of attractive homes. 
The instinct for good building which is the gift of 
the whole of America makes each house distinctive. 
There is never the hint of slum ugliness or slum con- 
gestion about them. The houses merely differ from 
the houses of the better-to-do in size, but, though 
they are smaller, they have the same pleasant feat- 
ures, neat colonial-style architecture, broad porches, 
unrailed lawns, and the rest. Inside they have cen- 
tral heating, electric light (the Niagara.hydro-power 



no Westward with the Prince of Wales 

makes lighting ridiculously cheap), baths, hardwood 
floors, and the other labour-saving devices of modern 
construction. Most of the houses are owned by the 
people who live in them, for the impulse towards 
purchase by deferred payments is very strong in the 
Canadian. 

One of the brightest of the suburbs was built up 
almost entirely through the energy of the British 
emigrant. These men working in the city did not 
mind the " long hike " out into the country, to an 
area where the street cars were not known. From 
farming lots they built up a charming district where, 
now that street cars are more reasonable, the Cana- 
dian is also anxious to live — when he can find a 
householder willing to sell. 

The Prince's route also lay through the big shop- 
ping streets such as Yonge (" street " is dropped in 
the West) and King. Here are the great and bril- 
liant stores, and here the thrusting, purposeful Cana- 
dian crowd does its trading. There is a touch of de- 
termination in the Canadian on the sidewalk which 
seems ruthlessness to the more easy-going Britisher, 
yet it is not rudeness, and the Canadian is an ex- 
traordinarily orderly person, with a discipline that 
springs from self rather than from obedience to by- 
laws. It may be this that makes a Canadian crowd 
so decorous, even at the moment when it seems de- 
fying the policemen. 

The Prince began his ride in the wonderful High 
Park, where Nature has had very little coddling from 
man, and the results of such non-interference are ad- 
mirable, and in that park he at once entered into the 



The City of Crowds ill 

avenue of people that was to border the way for 
twenty miles. 

Again this crowd thickened at certain focal points. 
At the entrances of different districts, in the streets 
of heavily populated areas, about the cemetery where 
he planted a tree, it gathered in astonishing mass, 
but the amazing thing was that no place on that 
twenty-mile run was without a crowd. 

The whole of the city appeared to have come in 
to the street to cheer and wave flags or handkerchiefs 
as he passed, just as the whole of the little boy popu- 
lation appeared to have made up its mind to run or 
cycle beside him for the whole of the journey despite 
all risks of cars behind. 

The automobileocracy of the wealthy districts 
made grandstands of their cars at every cross-road 
(and the Correspondents don't thank them for this, 
for they tried to cut into the procession of cars after 
the Prince had passed). The suburbans made their 
lawns into vantage points, and grouped themselves 
on the curb edge, and the working classes simply 
overflowed the road in solid masses of attractively 
dressed women and children and Canadianly-dressed 
men. "Attractively dressed" is a phrase to note; 
there are no rags or dowdiness in Canada. 

There was a carnival air in the greeting of that 
multitude on that long ride, and the laughing and 
cheering affection of the crowds would have called 
forth a like response even in a personality less sym- 
pathetic than the Prince. It captured him com- 
pletely. The formal salute never had a chance. 
First his answer to the cheering was an affectionate 



112 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

flag-waving, then the flag was not good enough and 
his hat came into play, then he was standing up and 
waving, and finally he again climbed on to the seat, 
and half standing, half sitting on the folded hood, 
rode through the delighted crowds. With members 
of his Staff holding on to him, he did practically the 
whole of the journey in this manner, sitting reason- 
ably only at quiet spots, only changing his hat from 
right to left hand when one arm had become utterly 
exhausted. And all the way the crowds lined the 
route and cheered. 

It was an astonishing spectacle, an amazing expe- 
rience. It was the just culmination of the three full 
days of profound and moving emotion in which 
Toronto had shown how intense was its affection. 

The effect of such a demonstration on the Prince 
himself was equally profound. One of the Canadian 
Generals who had been driving with His Royal 
Highness on one of these occasions, told us that in 
the midst of such a scene as this the Prince had 
turned to him and said, " Can you wonder that my 
heart is full?" 



CHAPTER IX 

OTTAWA 



THE run from Toronto to Ottawa, the city 
that is a province by itself and the capital 
of Canada, was a night run, but there was, 
in the early morning, a halt by the wayside so that 
the train should not arrive before " skedule." The 
halt was utilized by the Prince as an opportunity for 
a stroll, and by the more alert of the country people 
as an opportunity for a private audience. 

At a tiny station called Manotick farming families 
who believe in shaming the early bird, came and had 
a look at that royal-red monster of all-steel coaches, 
the train, while the youngest of them introduced the 
Prince to themselves. 

They came out across the fields in twos and threes. 
One little boy, in a brimless hat, working overalls, 
and with a fair amount of his working medium, 
plough land, liberally distributed over him — 
Huckleberry Finn come to life, as somebody observed 
— worked hard to break down his shyness and talk 
like a boy of the world to the Prince. A little girl, 
with the acumen of her sex, glanced once at the train, 
legged it to her father's homestead, and came back 
with a basket of apples, which she presented with all 
the solemnity of an illuminated address on vellum. 

It was always a strange sight to watch people com- 

113 



114 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ing across the fields from nowhere to gather round 
the observation platform of the train for these im- 
promptu audiences. Every part of Canada is well 
served by newspapers, yet to see people drift to the 
right place at the right time in the midst of loneliness 
had a touch of wonder about it. These casual 
gatherings were, indeed, as significant and as inter- 
esting as the great crowds of the cities. There 
was always an air of laughing friendliness in them, 
too, that gave charm to their utter informality, for 
which both the Prince and the people were respon- 
sible. 

From this apple-garnished pause the train pushed 
on, and passing through the garden approach, where 
pleasant lawns and trees make a boulevard along a 
canal which runs parallel with the railway, the Prince 
entered Ottawa. 

We had been warned against Ottawa, mainly by 
Ottawa men. We had been told not to expect too 
much from the Capital. As the Prince passed from 
crowded moment to crowded moment in Toronto, 
the stock of Ottawa slumped steadily in the minds 
of Ottawa's sons. They became insistent that we 
must not expect great things from Ottawa. Ottawa 
was not like that. Ottawa was the taciturn " burg." 

It was a city of people given over to the medita- 
tive, if sympathetic, silence. It was an artificial city 
sprung from the sterile seeds of legislature, and 
thriving on the arid food of Bills. It was a mere 
habitation of governments. It was a freak city 
created coldly by an act of Solomonic wisdom. Be- 
fore 1858 it was a drowsy French portage village, 



Ottawa 115 



sitting inertly at the fork of the Ottawa and Rideau 
rivers, concerning itself only with the lumber trade, 
almost inattentive to the battle which Montreal and 
Quebec, Toronto and Kingston were fighting for the 
political supremacy of the Dominion. Appealed to, 
to settle this dispute, Queen Victoria decided all 
feuds by selecting what had been the old Bytown, 
but which was now Ottawa, as the official capital of 
the Dominion. 

Ottawa men pointed all this out to us, and de- 
clared that a town of such artificial beginnings, and 
whose present population was made up of civil serv- 
ants and mixed Parliamentarians, could not be ex- 
pected to show real, red-blood enthusiasm. 

A day later those Ottawa men met us in the high 
and handsome walls of the Chateau Laurier, and 
they were entirely unrepentant. They were even 
proud of their false prophecy, and asked us to join 
them in a grape-juice and soda — the limit of the 
emotion of good fellowship in Canada (anyhow pub- 
licly) is grape-juice and soda — in order that they 
might explain to us how they never for a moment 
doubted that Ottawa would show the enthusiasm it 
had shown. 

" This is the Capital of Canada, sir. The home 
of our Parliament and the Governor-General. It 
is the hub of loyalty and law. Of course it would 
beat the band." 

II 

I don't know that I want to quarrel with Ottawa's 
joke, for I am awed by the v/ay it brought it off. 



n6 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Perhaps it brought it off on the Prince also. If so 
he must have had a shock, and a delightful one. For 
the taciturnity of Ottawa is a myth. When the 
Prince entered it on the morning of Thursday, Aug- 
ust 28th, it was as silent as a whirlwind bombard- 
ment, and as reticent as a cyclone. 

There were crowds, inevitably vast and cheering, 
with the invincible good-humour of Canada. They 
captured him with a rush after he was through with 
the formalities of being greeted by the Governor- 
General and other notabilities, and had mounted a 
carriage behind the scarlet outriders of Royalty. 
That carriage may have been more decorative but 
it was no more purposeful than an automobile would 
be under the circumstance. Even as the automobile, 
it went at a walking pace, with the crowd pressing 
close around it. 

It passed up from the swinging, open triangle that 
fronts the Chateau Laurier Hotel and the station, 
over the bridge that spans the Rideau Canal, and 
along the broad road lined with administration build- 
ings and clubs, to the spacious grass quadrangle 
about which the massive Parliament buildings group 
themselves. 

This quadrangle is a fit place to stage a pageant. 
It crowns a slow hill that is actually a sharp bluff 
clothed in shrubs that hangs over the startling blue 
waters of the Ottawa river. From the river the 
mass of buildings poised dramatically on that indi- 
vidual bluff is a sharp note of beauty. On the quad- 
rangle, that is the city side, this note is lost, and the 
rough stone buildings, though dignified, have a tough, 



Ottawa 117 



square-bodied look. Yet the massiveness of the 
whole grouping about the great space of grass and 
gravel terraces certainly gives a large air. They 
form the adequate wings and backcloth for pag- 
eants. 

And what happened that morning in the quad- 
rangle was certainly a pageant of democracy. 

There was a formal program, but on the whole 
the crowd eliminated that for one of its own liking. 
It listened to addresses; it heard Sir Robert Borden, 
and General Currie, only just returned to Canada, 
express the Dominion's sense of welcome. Then it 
expressed it itself by sweeping the police completely 
away, and surrounding the Prince in an excited 
throng. 

In the midst of that crowd the Prince stood laugh- 
ing and cheerful, endeavouring to accommodate all 
the hands that were thrust towards him. A review 
of Boy Scouts was timed to take place, but the crowd 
" scratched " it. The neat wooden barricades and 
the neat ropes that linked them up about a neat par- 
ade ground on the green were reduced by the scien- 
tific process of bringing an irresistible force against 
a movable body. Boy Scouts ceased to figure in the 
program and became mere atoms in a mass that 
surrounded the Prince once more, and expressed it- 
self in the usual way now it had him to itself. 

As usual the Prince himself showed not the slight- 
est disinclination for fitting in with such an im- 
promptu ceremony. He was as happy and in his 
element as he always was when meeting everyday 
people in the closest intimacy. It was a carnival 



n8 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

of democracy, but one in which he played as demo- 
cratic a part as any among that throng. 

Yet though the Prince himself was the direct in- 
centive to the democratic exchanges that happened 
throughout the tour, there was no doubt that the 
strain of them was exhausting. 

He possesses an extraordinary vitality. He is so 
full of life and energy that it was difficult to give 
him enough to do, and this and the fact that Can- 
ada's wonderful welcome had called into play a 
powerful sympathetic response, led him to throw 
himself into everything with a tireless zest. Never- 
theless, the strenuous days at Toronto, followed by 
this strenuous welcome at Ottawa, had made great 
demands upon him, and it was decided to cut down 
his program that day to a Garden Party in the 
charming grounds of Government House, and to 
shelve all engagements for the next day, Friday, 
August 29th. 

The Prince agreed to the dropping of all engage- 
ments save one, and that was the Public Reception 
at the City Hall on the 29th. It was the most ex- 
acting of the events on the program, but he would 
not hear of its elimination; the only alteration in 
detail that he made was that his right hand, damaged 
at Toronto, should be allowed to rest, and that all 
shaking should be done with the left. 

The Public Reception took place. The only in- 
vitation issued was one in the newspapers. The 
newspapers said " The Prince will meet the City." 
He did. The whole City came. It was again the 
most popular, as well as the most stimulating of 



Ottawa 119 



functions. And it followed the inevitable lines. 
All manner of people, all grades of people in all 
conditions of costume attended. Old ladies again 
asked him when he was going to get married. 
Lumbermen in calf-high boots' grinned " How do, 
Prince?" Mothers brought babies in arms, most 
of them of the inarticulate age, and of awful and 
solemn dignity of under one — it was as though 
these Ottawa mothers had been inspired by the fine 
and homely loyalty of a past age, and had brought 
their babies to be " touched " by a Prince, who, like 
the Princes of old, was one with as well as being at 
the head of the great British family. 

And with all the people were the little boys, eager, 
full of initiative and cunning. Shut out by the Olym- 
pians, one group of little boys found a strategic way 
into the Hall by means of a fire-escape staircase. 
They had already shaken hands with the Prince be- 
fore their flank movement had been discovered and 
the flaw in the endless queue repaired. That queue 
was never finished. Although, on the testimony of 
the experts, the Prince shook hands at the rate of 
forty-five to the minute, the time set aside for the 
reception only allowed of some 2,500 filing before 
him. 

But those outside that number were not forgotten. 
The Prince came out to the front of the hall to ex- 
press his regret that Nature had proved niggardly 
in the matter of hands. He had only one hand, and 
that limited greetings, but he could not let them go 
without expressing his delight to them for their 
warm and personal welcome. 



120 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

The disappointed ones recognized the limits of 
human endeavour. His popularity was in no way- 
lessened. They were content with having seen " the 
cute little feller " as some of them called him, and 
made the most of that experience by listening to, 
and swopping anecdotes about, him. 

Most of these centred round his accessibility. 
One typical story was about a soldier, who, having 
met him in France, stepped out from the crowd and 
hopped on to the footboard of his car to say " How 
d'y' do?" The Prince gripped the khaki man's 
hand at once, and shaking it and holding the sol- 
dier safely on the car with his other hand, he talked 
while they went along. Then both men saluted, 
and the soldier hopped off again and returned to the 
crowd. 

" It was just as if you saw me in an automobile 
and came along to tell me something," said the man 
who told me the story. " There was no king-stuff 
about it. And that's why he gets us. There isn't 
a sheet of ice between us and him." 

Another man said to me: 

" If you'd told me a month ago that anybody was 
going to get this sort of a reception I should have 
smiled and called you an innocent. I would have 
told you the Canadians aren't built that way. We're 
a hard-bitten, independent, irreverent breed. We 
don't go about shouting over anybody. . . . But 
now we've gone wild over him. And I can't under- 
stand it. He's our sort. He has no side. We like 
to treat men as men, and that's the way he meets 
us." 



Ottawa 121 



in 

The long week-end, so strenuously begun, did, 
however, give the Prince his opportunity for rest and 
recreation. He had a quiet time in the home of the 
Governor-General at the beautiful Rideau Hall, the 
attractive and spacious grounds of which are part 
of the untrammelled expanses of the lovely Rockhill 
Park which hangs on a cliff and keeps company with 
the shining Ottawa river for miles to the east of the 
city. Apart from sightseeing, and golfing and danc- 
ing at the pretty County Club across the Ottawa on 
the Hull side, he attempted no program until 
Monday morning. 

Ottawa is not so virile in atmosphere as other of 
the Canadian cities. Its artificial heart, the Parlia- 
ment area, seems to absorb most of its vitality. Its 
architecture is massed very effectively on the hill 
whose steep cliffs in a spray of shrubs, rise at the knee 
of the two rivers, the Ottawa and the Rideau, but 
outside the radius of the Parliament buildings and 
the few, fine, brisk, lively streets that serve them, 
the town fades disappointingly eastward, west- 
ward and northward into spiritless streets of resi- 
dences. 

The shores of the river are its chiefest attraction. 
Below the Parliament bluff, there lies to the left a 
silver white spit in the blue of the stream, that humps 
itself into a green and habitual mass on which are a 
huddle of picturesque houses. These hide the spray 
of the Chaudiere Falls, which stretch between this 
island and the Hull side. Below the Falls is the 



122 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

picturesque mass of a lumber " boom," that stretches 
down the river. 

To the extreme right beyond the locks of Rideau 
Canal, is the dramatic lattice-work of a fine bridge, 
a bridge where railroad tracks, tram-roads, automo- 
bile and footways dive under and over each other at 
the entrances in order to find their different levels 
for crossing. Beyond the bridge, and close against 
it is the jutting-cliff that makes the point of Major 
Hill Park. 

Between these two extremes, right and left, one 
faces a broad plain, wooded and gemmed with 
painted houses, and ending in a smoke-blue rampart 
of distant hills — all of it luminant with the curi- 
ously clarified light of Canada. 

From Major Hill Park the riverside avenue goes 
east over the Rideau, whose Falls are famous, but 
now obscured by a lumber mill; past Rideau Hall to 
Rockhill Park. Rockhill Park is a delight. It has 
all the joys of the primitive wilderness plus a service 
of street-cars. Its promenade under the fine and 
scattered trees follows the lip of the cliff along the 
Ottawa, and across the blue stream can be seen the 
fillet of gold beach of the far side, and on the stream 
are red-sailed boats, canoes, and natty gasolene 
launches. How far Rockhill Park keeps company 
with the Ottawa, I do not know. A stroll of nearly 
two hours brought me to a region of comely country 
houses, set in broad gardens — but there was still 
park, and it seemed to go on for ever. 

There are two or three Golf Clubs (every town in 
Canada has a golf course, or two, and sometimes 



Ottawa 123 



they are municipal) over the river on the Hull side 
— a side that was at the time of our visit a place 
of pilgrimage from Ottawa proper. For it is in 
Quebec, where the " dry " law is not implacable as 
that of Ottawa and Ontario. Hull is also noted for 
its match factory and other manufactures that make 
up a very good go-ahead industrial town, as well as 
for the fact that in matters of contributions to 
Victory Loans, and that sort of thing, it can hold its 
own with any city, though that city be five times its 
size. 

The chief of the Ottawa clubs on the Hull side is 
the County Club, an idyllic place that has made the 
very best out of the rather rough plain, and stands 
looking through the trees to the rapids of the Ottawa 
river. It is a delightful club, built with the usual 
Western instinct for apposite design, and, as with 
most clubs on the American Continent, it is a revela- 
tion of comfort. Its dining-room is extraordinarily 
attractive, for it is actually the spacious verandah of 
the building, screened by trellis work into which is 
woven the leaves and flowers of climbers. The ceil- 
ing is a canopy of flowers and green leaves, and to 
dine here overlooking the lawns is to know an hour 
of the greatest charm. 

The Prince was the guest here on several occa- 
sions, and dances were given in his honour. For 
this purpose the lawn in front of the verandah was 
squared off with a high arcadian trellis, and between 
the pillars of this trellis were hung flowers and flags 
and lights, and all the trees about had coloured bulbs 
amid their leaves, so that at night it was an impres- 



124 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

sion of Arcady as a modern Watteau might see it, 
with the crispness and the beauty of the women and 
the vivid dresses of the women giving the scene a 
quality peculiarly and vivaciously Canadian. 



IV 

The circumstances of Monday, September ist, 
made it an unforgettable day. 

The chief ceremonies on the Prince's program 
were the laying of the corner-stone of the new Par- 
liament Buildings, and the inauguration of the Vic- 
tory Loan. But something else happened which 
made it momentous. It happened to be Labour 
Day. 

It was the day when the whole of Labour in Can- 
ada — and indeed in America — gave itself over to 
demonstrations. Labour held street parades, field 
sports, and, I daresay, made speeches. It was the 
day of days for the workers. 

There were some who thought that the pro- 
gram of Labour would clash with the program 
of the Prince. That, to put it at its mildest, Labour 
on a holiday would ignore the Royal ceremonials 
and emasculate them as functions. The men who 
put forward these opinions were Canadians, but they 
did not know Canada. It was Labour Day, and 
Labour made the day for the Prince. 

When the Prince had learnt that it was the Peo- 
ple's day, and that there was to be a big sports meet- 
ing and gala in one of the Ottawa parks, he had 
specially added another item to his full list of events, 



Ottawa 125 



and made it known that he would visit the park. 

Labour promptly returned the courtesy, and of its 
own free will turned its parade into a guard of hon- 
our, which lined the fine Rideau and Wellington 
streets for his progress between Government House 
and Parliament Square. 

As far as I could gather Labour decided upon and 
carried this out without consulting anybody. Streets 
were taken over without any warning, and certainly 
without any fuss. There seemed to be few police 
about, and there was no need for them. Labour 
took command of the show in the interest of its 
friend the Prince, and would not permit the slight- 
est disorderliness. 

It was a remarkable sight. Early in the morning 
the Labour Parade appeared along Rideau Street, 
mounting the hill to the Parliament House. The 
processionists, each group in the costume of its call- 
ing, walked in long, thin files on each side of the 
road, the line broken at intervals by the trade floats. 
Floats are an essential part of every American 
parade; they are what British people call "set- 
pieces," tableaux built up on wagons or on auto- 
mobiles; all of them are ingenious and most of them 
are beautiful. 

These floats represented the various trades, a 
boiler-maker's shop in full (and noisy) action; a 
stone-worker's bench in operation; the framework 
of a wooden house on an auto, to show Ottawa what 
its carpenters and joiners could do, and so on. With 
these marched the workers, distinctively clothed, as 
though the old guilds had never ceased. 



126 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

When the head of the procession reached the 
entrance of Parliament Square it halted, and the line, 
turning left and right, walked towards the curb, 
pressing back the thousands of sightseers to the 
pavement in a most effective manner. They lined 
and kept the route in this fashion until the Prince 
had passed. 

It was thus that the Prince drove, not between 
the ranks of an army of soldiers, but through the 
ranks of the army of labour. Not khaki, but the 
many uniforms of labour marked the route. There 
were firemen in peaked caps, with bright steel grap- 
pling-hooks at their waists; butchers in white blouses, 
white trousers, and white peaked caps; there were 
tram-conductors, and railway-men, hotel porters, 
teamsters in overalls, lumbermen in calf-high boots 
of tan, with their rough socks showing above them 
on their blue jumper trousers, barbers, drug-store 
clerks and men of all the trades. 

Above this guard of workers were the banners of 
the Unions, some in English, some proclaiming in 
French that here was " La Fraternite Unie Charpen- 
tiers et Menuisiers," and so on. 

It was a real demonstration of democracy. It 
was the spontaneous and affectionate action of the 
everyday people, determined to show how personal 
was its regard for a Prince vvho knew how to be one 
with the everyday people. As a demonstration it 
was immensely more significant than the most august 
item of a formal program. 

As the Prince rode through those hearty and 
friendly ranks in a State carriage, and behind 



Ottawa 12 7 



mounted troopers, the troopers and the trappings 
seemed to matter very little indeed. The crowd 
that cheered and waved flags — and sometimes 
spanners and kitchen pans — and the youth who 
waved his gloves back and forth with all their own 
freedom from ceremony, were the things that 

mattered. 

When, at the laying of the corner-stone a few min- 
utes later, Sir Robert Borden declared that, in re- 
peating the act of his grandfather, who laid the 
original corner-stone of Canada's Parliament budd- 
ings, as Prince of Wales, in i860, His Royal High- 
ness was inaugurating a new era, the happenings ot 
just now seemed to lend conviction that indeed a 
new phase of history had come into being. It was 
a phase in which throne and people had been woven 
into a strong and sane democracy, begot of the inti- 
mate personal sympathy, understanding and reliance 
the war had brought about between rulers and peo- 

Pl The new buildings replace the old Parliament 
Houses burnt down in the beginning of the war 
The fire was attended by sad loss of life, and one ot 
those killed was a lady, who, having got out of the 
burning building in safety, was suddenly overcome 
by a feminine desire to save her furs. She re- 
entered the blazing building and was lost 

The new building follows the design of the old, 
rather rigid structure, though it has not the cam- 
panile. The porch where the stone was laid was 
draped in huge hangings descending in grave folds 
from a sheaf of flags; this with the fa S ade of the 



128 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

grey stone building made a superb backing to the 
great stage of terrace upon which the ceremony 
was enacted. It had all the dignity, colour and 
braveness of a Durbar. 

The Victory Loan was inaugurated by the un- 
furling of a flag by the Prince. He promised to 
give to each of the cities and villages (by the, way, 
I don't think the villages are villages in Canada; 
they are all towns) who subscribed a certain per- 
centage a replica of this special flag. There was 
keen competition throughout the Dominion for these 
flags, Canadians responding to the pictures on the 
hoardings with a good will, in order to win a 
" Prince of Wales' Flag." 

Although the Prince was down to visit Hull at a 
specific time that afternoon, he set aside an hour in 
order to pay his promised visit to the Labour fete 
in Lansdowne Park. There was only time for him 
to drive through the park, but the warm reception 
given to him made it an action really worth while. 

Hull, which is inclined to sprawl as a town, was 
transformed by sun, flags and people into a place of 
great attraction when the Prince arrived. And if 
there was not any high pomp about the visit, there 
was certainly prettiness. The pretty girls of Hull 
had transformed themselves into representatives of 
all the races of the Entente, and as the Prince stood 
on the scarlet steps of a dais outside the Town Hall, 
each one of these came forward and made him a 
curtsy. 

Following them were four tiny girls, each hold- 
ing a large bouquet, each bouquet being linked to the 



Ottawa 129 



others by broad red ribbons. They were the jolliest 
little girls, but nervous, and after negotiating the 
terrors of the scarlet stairs with discretion, the broad 
desert of the dai's undid them — or rather it didn't. 
At the moment of presentation, four little girls, as 
well as four bouquets, were linked together by 
broad red ribbons, until it was difficult to tell which 
was little girl and which was bouquet. There were 
many untanglers present, but the chief of them was 
the Prince of Wales himself. 

The Hull ceremonials were certainly as happy as 
any could be. The little girls gave a homely touch, 
so did the people — match-factory girls, brown- 
habited Franciscan friars, and the rest — who joined 
in the public reception, but the crowning touch of 
this atmosphere was the review of the war vet- 
erans. 

There were so many war veterans that Hull had 
no open space large enough to parade them. Hull, 
therefore, had the happy idea of reviewing them in 
the main street. Thus the everyday street was 
packed with everyday men who had fought for the 
very homes about them. That seemed to bring out 
the real purpose of the great war more than any 
effort in propaganda could. 

It was in the main street, too, after receiving a 
loving cup from the Great War Veterans, that the 
Prince spoke to these comrades of the war. He 
stood up in his car and addressed them simply and 
directly, thanking them and wishing them good luck, 
and there was something infinitely suggestive in his 
standing up there so simply amid that pack of men 



130 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

and women wedged tightly between the houses of 
that homely street. 

Wedged is assuredly the right term, for it was 
with difficulty, and only by infinite care, that the car 
was driven through the crowd and away. 



CHAPTER X 

MONTREAL: QUEBEC 



MONTREAL was not actually in the sche- 
dule. In the program of the Prince's 
tour it was put down as the last place he 
should visit. This, in a sense, was fitting. It was 
proper that the greatest city in Canada should wind 
up the visit in a befitting week. 

All the same, as the Prince himself said, he could 
not possibly start for the West without making at 
least a call on Montreal, so he rounded off his 
travels among the big cities of the Canadian East 
by spending the inside of a day there. 

I wonder whether there was ever an inside of a 
day so crowded? I was present when Manchester 
rushed President Wilson through a headlong morn- 
ing of events, and the Manchester effort was pedes- 
trian beside Montreal's. Even the Prince, who 
himself can put any amount of vigour into life, must 
have found nothing in his experience to equal a non- 
stop series of ceremonies carried on, at times, at a 
pace of forty-miles an hour. 

That is what happened. Montreal was given 
about four hours of the Prince. Montreal is a pro- 
gressive city; it has an up-to-date and " Do-it-Now " 
sense. Confronted at very short notice with those 

131 



132 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

four hours, it promptly set itself to make the most 
of them. It packed about four days' program into 
them. 

It managed this, of course, by using motor-cars. 
The whole of the American Continent, I have come 
to see, has a motor-car method of thinking out and 
accomplishing things. Montreal certainly has. 
Montreal met the Prince in an automobile mood, 
whipped him from the train and entertained him on 
the top gear for every moment of his stay. 



II 

He arrived at the handsome Windsor Station of 
the C.P.R. on the morning of Tuesday, September 
2nd, and was at once taken to a big, grey motor. 
His guide, the Mayor of the city, then began to 
show him how time could be annihilated and days 
compressed into hours. 

In those few hours he was shown not a section 
of the great commercial city, not merely the City 
Hall, and a street or two, and a place wherein to 
lunch. He was shown all Montreal. He was 
shown the city of Montreal and the suburbs of Mon- 
treal, and verily I believe he was shown every man, 
woman, and certainly every child of flag-wagging 
age, in Montreal. 

And when he had seen the high, fine business 
blocks of Montreal, and the pretty residential dis- 
tricts, where the well-designed homes seem to stand 
on terrace over terrace of the smoothest, greenest 
grass, he was shown the country-side about Mon- 



Montreal: Quebec 133 

treal, the comely little habitant parishes and holiday 
places that make outlying Montreal, and the con- 
vents and the colleges where Montreal educates it- 
self, the Universities where that education is rounded 
off, and the long, wide, straight speedways over 
which Montreal citizens get the best out of their 
motor-car moments — and he was shown how it 
was done. 

And after showing him the rivers that make the 
hilly country about Montreal beautiful, and the little 
pocket villages, he was swung back out of the green 
of the summer country and shown more business 
blocks, and just a hint of the great wharves and 
docks that fringe the St. Lawrence and give the 
city its great industrial power and fame. Then 
when they had shown him all the things that man 
usually sees only after weeks of tenacious explora- 
tion, they spun him up a corkscrew drive that goes 
first among charming houses, then among beautiful 
deep trees and grass, and sat him down in a glowing 
pavilion on the top of this hill, Mount Royal — the 
Montreal that gives the city its name — and gave 
him lunch. 

There, as he ate, he looked down over one of the 
great views of the world. Below him was the splen- 
did vista of a splendid city; the mass of tall offices, 
factories and the high fret of derricks and elevators 
along the quays that covered the site of the Indian 
lodges of Hochelaga that Jacques Cartier first 
found; the mass of spires from a thousand churches, 
the swelling domes and hipped roofs of basilica and 
college that had grown up from the old religious 



134 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

outpost, the nucleus of Christianity in the wilds that 
was to convert the wilds, the Ville Marie de Mon- 
treal that Maisonneuve had founded nearly three 
centuries ago. 

And beyond this swinging breadth of city that 
was modernity, as well as history, the Prince saw the 
grey, misty bosom of the St. Lawrence, winding 
broad and significant beneath the distant hills. 



Ill 

Truly it had been a mighty day, worthy of a mighty 
city. And a day not merely big in achievement, but 
big in meaning also. In his drive the Prince had 
covered no less than thirty-six miles in and about the 
city, and on practically the whole of that great sweep 
there had been crowds, and at times big crowds, 
all friendly and with an enthusiasm that was French 
as well as Canadian. 

There were naturally tracts of road in the coun- 
try where people did not gather in force, but almost 
everywhere there were some. Sometimes it was a 
family gathered by a pretty house draped with flags. 
Sometimes it was a village, making up with the flags 
in their hands for the hanging flags short notice had 
prevented their sporting. 

On an open stretch of road the Prince would come 
abreast of a convent in the fields. By the fence of 
the convent all the little girls would be ranked, 
dressed, sometimes, in national ribbons, and anyhow 
carrying flags, and with them would be the nuns. 
Or if the convent was not a teaching order, the nuns 



Montreal: Quebec 135 



would be by themselves, forming a delightful pic- 
ture of quiet respect on the porch or along the gar- 
den wall. 

Boys' schools had the inmates gathered at the 
road-edge in jolly mobs, though some of these had 
a semi-military dignity, because of the quaint and 
kepi-ed uniform of the school, that made the boys 
look like cadets out of a picture by Detaille. 

The seminaries had their flocks of black fledglings 
drawn up under the professor-priests, and the sober 
black of these embryo priests had not the slightest 
restriction on their enthusiasm. 

There were crowds everywhere on that extraordi- 
nary ride, but it was in Montreal itself that the 
throngs reached immense proportions. From the 
first moment of arrival, when the Prince in mufti 
rode out from under the clangour of " God Bless 
the Prince of Wales" played on the bells of St. 
George's Church, that hob-nobs with the station, 
crowds were thick about the route. As he swung 
from Dominion Square (in which the station stands) 
into the Regent Street of Montreal, St. Catherine 
Street, crowds of employes crowded the windows of 
the big and fine stores, and added their welcome to 
the mass on the sidewalks. 

Short notice had curtailed decoration, but the en- 
thusiastic employes (mainly feminine) of one tall 
store strove to rectify the lack by arming themselves 
with flags and stationing themselves at every win- 
dow. Balancing perilously, they waited until the 
Prince came level, and then set the whole face of the 
tall building fluttering with Union Jacks. 



136 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

From these streets, impressive in their sense of 
vigour and industry, the procession of cars mounted 
through the residential quarter to Mount Royal 
Park. Here in the presence of a big crowd that 
surrounded him and got to close quarters at once, 
the Prince alighted and stayed a few minutes at the 
statue of Georges Etienne Cartier, the father of 
Canadian unity, whose centenary was then being 
celebrated, since the war forbade rejoicing on the 
real anniversary in 19 14. 

Carder's daughter, Hortense Cartier, was present 
at this little ceremony, and she was, as it were, 
a personal link between her father and the Prince, 
who is himself helping to inaugurate a new phase of 
unity, that of the Empire. 

From this point the Prince's route struck out into 
the country districts that I have described, but the 
crowds had accumulated rather than diminished 
when he returned to the streets of the city, about one 
o'clock, and he drove through lanes of people so 
dense that at times the pace of his car was retarded 
to a walk. 

The crowd was a suggestive one. All ranks and 
conditions were in it — and conditions rather than 
ranks were apparent in the dock-side area, which is 
a dingy one for Canada. But in all the crowds the 
thing that struck me most was their proportion of 
children. Montreal seemed a veritable hive of chil- 
dren. There were thousands and thousands of 
them. 

The streets were bursting with kiddies. And not 
merely were there multitudes of girls and boys of 



Montreal: Quebec 137 

that thoroughly vociferous age of somewhere under 
twelve, but there were ranked battalions of boys and 
maids, all of an age obviously under twenty. 

Quebec is the province of large families. Ten 
children to a marriage is a commonplace, and twenty 
is not a rarity. A man is not thought to be worth 
his salt unless he has his quiver full. And the result 
of this as I saw it in the streets gives food for 
thought. 

That huge marshalling of the citizens of tomor- 
row gives one not merely a sense of Canada's po- 
tentiality, but of the potentiality of Quebec in the 
future of Canada. With a new race of such a 
healthy standard growing up, the future of Mon- 
treal has a look of greatness. Montreal is now the 
biggest and most vigorous city in Canada, it plays 
a large part in the life of Canada. What part will 
it play tomorrow? 

A good as well as great part, surely. Discrimin- 
ating Canadians tell you that the French-Canadian 
makes the best type of citizen. He is industrious, 
go-ahead, sane, practical; he is law-abiding and he 
is loyal. His history shows that he is loyal; indeed, 
Canada as it stands today owes not a little to French- 
Canadian loyalty and willingness to take up arms in 
support of British institutions. 

French-Canada took up arms in the Great War to 
good purpose, sending 40,000 men to the Front, 
though its good work has been obscured by ' the 
political propaganda made out of the Anti-Con- 
scription campaign. Sober politicians — by no 
means on the side of the French-Canadians — told 



138 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

me that there was rather more smoke in that matter 
than circumstances created, and in Britain particu- 
larly the business was over-exaggerated. There 
was a good deal of politics mixed up in the attitude 
of Quebec, " And in any case," said my informant, 
" Quebec was not the first to oppose conscription, 
nor yet the bitterest, though she was, perhaps, the 
most candid." 

The language difficulty is a difficulty, yet that has 
been the subject of exaggeration, also. Those who 
find it a grave problem seem to be those who have 
never come in contact with it, but are anxious about 
it at a distance. Those who are in contact with the 
French-speaking races say that French and English- 
speaking peoples get on well on the whole, and have 
an esteem for each other that makes nothing of the 
language barrier. 

Concerning the Roman Catholic Church, which is 
certainly in a very powerful position in Quebec, I 
have heard from non-Catholics quite as much said in 
favour of the good it does, as I have heard to the 
contrary, so I concluded that on its human side it is 
as human as any other concern, doing good and 
making mistakes in the ordinary human way. As 
far as its spiritual side is concerned there is no doubt 
at all that it holds its people. Its huge churches 
are packed with huge congregations at every service 
on Sunday. 

On the whole, then, I fancy that that part of 
Canada's future which lies in the hands of the chil- 
dren of Montreal, and the Province of Quebec gen- 
erally, will be for the good of the Dominion. Cer- 



Montreal: Quebec 139 

tainly the attitude of the people as shown in the 
packed and ecstatic streets of Montreal was a very 
good omen. 

The welcome had had its usual effect on the Prince. 
The formal salute never had a chance, and from 
the outset of the ride he had stood up in his car and 
waved back in answer to the cheering of the crowd. 
When standing for so many miles tired him, he sat 
high up on the folded hood, with one of his suite to 
hold him, and he did not stop waving his hat. In 
this way he accomplished the thirty-six miles ride, 
only slipping down into his seat as the car mounted 
the stiff zig-zag that led up Mount Royal to the 
luncheon pavilion. 

The slowness of this climb was, in a sense, his 
undoing. As his car neared the top of the hill, two 
Montreal flappers, whose extreme youth was only 
exceeded by their extreme daring, sprang on to the 
footboard and held him up with autograph books. 
He immediately produced a fountain pen, and sitting 
once more on the back of the car, wrote his name as 
the car went along, and the young ladies from Mon- 
treal clung on to it. 

This delightful act was too much for one of the 
maidens, for, on getting her book back, she kissed the 
Prince impulsively, and then in a sudden attack of 
deferred modesty, sprang from the car and ran for 
her blushes' sake. 

From the luncheon pavilion the Prince was whirled 
to the Royal train, and in that, after a recuperative 
round of golf at a course just outside Montreal, he 
set out for the comparative calm of the great West. 



CHAPTER XI 

ON THE ROAD TO TROUT 

I 

THE run on the days following the packed 
moments of Montreal was one of luxurious 
indolence. The Royal train was heading 
for the almost fabled trout of Nipigon, where, 
among the beauties of lake and stream, the Prince 
was to take a long week-end fishing and preparing for 
more crowds and more strenuosity in the Canadian 
West. 

Through those two days the train seemed to 
meander in a leisurely fashion through varied and 
attractive country, only stopping now and then as 
though it had to work off a ceremonial occasionally 
as an excuse for existing at all. 

The route ran through pleasant, farmed land be- 
tween Montreal and North Bay and Sudbury, and 
then switched downward through the bleak nickel 
and copper country to the beautiful coast of Lake 
Huron on its way to Sault Ste. Marie. From this 
town, which the whole Continent knows as " Soo," it 
plunged north through the magnificent scenery of the 
Algoma area to Oba, and, turning west again (and 
in the night) , it ran on to Nipigon Lake. 

It was a genial and attractive run. We sat, as 
it were, lapped in the serenity of the C.P.R., and 

140 



On the Road to Trout H 1 



studied the view. Wherever there were houses 
there were people, to wave something at the Prince s 
car At one homestead a man and his wife stood 
alone near the split-rail fence, the woman curtsying, 
the man, who had obviously been a soldier, nag- 
wagging some message we could not catch, with a big 
red ensign; an infinitely touching sight, that couple 
getting their greeting to the Prince in spite of diffi- 
culties. On the stations the local school children 
were always drawn up in ranks, most of them hold- 
ing flags, many having a broad red-white-and-blue 
ribbon across their front rank to show their patnot- 

SI At North Bay, a purposeful little town that lets 
the traveller either into the scenic and sporting de- 
lights of Lake Nipissing, or into the mining districts 
of the Timiskaming country, there was a bright little 
reception. North Bay is a characteristic Canadian 
town. It was born in a night, so to speak, and its 
arowth outstrips editions of guide books. Outside 
The neat station there is a big grass oblong, and 
about this green the frame houses and the shops 
extend. Behind it is the town so keen on growing up 
about the big railway repair shops, that it has no 
time yet to give to road-making. 

The ceremonial was in the green oblong, and all 
North Bay left their houses and shops to attend. 
The visit had more the air of a family party than 
aught else, for, after a mere pretence of keeping 
ranks, the people broke in upon the function, and 
Prince and Staff and people became inextricably 
mixed. When His Royal Highness took car to 



142 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

drive around the town, the crowd cut off the cars 
in the procession, and for half an hour North Bay 
was full of orderlies and committee-men automobil- 
ing about speculative streets in search of a missing 
Prince, plus one Mayor. 

Sudbury, the same type of town, growing at a dis- 
tracting pace because of its railway connection and 
its smelting plants, had the same sort of ceremony. 
From here we passed through a land of almost 
sinister bleakness. There were tracts livid and 
stark, entirely without vegetation, and with the livid 
white and naked surface cut into wild channels and 
gullies by rains that must have been as pitiless as 
the land. It was as though we had steamed out of 
a human land into the drear valleys of the moon, 
and one expected to catch glimpses of creatures as 
terrifying as any Mr. Wells has imagined. So 
cadaverous a realm could breed little else. 

It was the country of nickel and copper. We 
saw occasionally the buildings and workings (scarce 
less grim than the land) through the agency of which 
came the grey slime that had rendered the country 
so bleak. They are particularly rich mines, and 
rank high among the nickel workings in the world. 
They were also, let it be said, of immense value to 
the Allies during the war. 

Pushing south, the line soon redeems itself in the 
beauty of the lakes. It bends to skirt the shore of 
Lake Huron, a great blue sea, and yet but a link in 
the chain of great lakes that lead from Superior 
through it to Erie and Ontario lakes, and on to the 
St. Lawrence. 



On the Road to Trout 143 



We arrived on a beautiful evening at Algoma, a 
spot as delightful as a Cornish village, on the beach 
of that inlet of Lake Huron called Georgian Bay. 
We walked in the astonishing quiet of the evening 
through the tiny place, and along the deep, sandy 
road that has not yet been won from the primitive 
forests, to where but a tiny fillet of beach stood be- 
tween the spruce woods and the vast silence of 
the water. From that serene and quiet spot we 
looked through the still evening to the far and beau- 
tiful islands. 

In the wonderful clear air, and with all the soft 
colours of the sunset glowing in the still water, the 
beauty of the place was almost too poignant. We 
might have been the discoverers of an uninhabited 
bay in the Islands of the Blessed. I have never 
known any place so remote, so still and so beautiful. 
But it was far from being uninhabited. There were 
rustic picnic tables under the spruce trees, and there 
was a diving-board standing over the clear water. 
The inhabitants of Algoma knew the worth of this 
place, and we felt them to be among the luckiest 
people on the earth. 

The islands we saw far away in the soft beauty 
of the sunset, and between which the enigmatic light 
of a lake steamer was moving, are said to be 
Hiawatha's Islands. In any case, it was here that 
the pageant of Hiawatha was held some years back, 
and across the still lake in that pageant, Hiawatha 
in his canoe went out to be lost in the glories of the 
sunset. 



144 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ii 

On the morning of Tuesday, September 4th, the 
train skirted Georgian Bay, passing many small vil- 
lages given over to lumber and fishing, and all hav- 
ing, with their tiny jetties, motor launches and sail- 
ing boats, something of the perfection of scenes 
viewed in a clear mirror. By mid-morning the train 
reached Sault Ste. Marie. 

" Soo " is a vivid place. It is a young city on the 
rise. A handful of years ago it was a French mis- 
sion, beginning to turn its eyes languidly towards 
lumber. It is on the neck that joins the waters of 
Superior and Huron, but the only through traffic 
was that of the voyageurs, who made the portage 
round the stiff St. Mary's Rapids, that, with a drop 
of eighteen feet in their length, forbade any vessel 
but that of the canoe of the adventurer to pass their 
troubled waters. 

Then America and Canada began to build canals 
and locks to link the great lakes, in spite of the 
Rapids, and " Soo " woke. It has been awake and 
living since that moment. It has been playing lock 
against lock with the Michigan men across the river, 
each planning cunningly to establish a system that 
will carry the long lake vessels not only in locks be- 
fitting their size, but in locks that can be handled 
more swiftly than those of the rival. 

At the moment the prize is with Canada. It has 
a lock nine hundred feet long, and can do the busi- 
ness of lowering a great vessel from Superior to 
Huron with one action, where America uses four 



On the Road to Trout 145 

locks. The Americans have a larger lock than the 
Canadian, but the Canadians are quicker. 

And this means something. The traffic on these 
lakes is greater than the traffic on many seas. Down 
this vast water highway come the narrow pencils of 
lake-boats carrying grain and ore and lumber in hulls 
that are all hold. They come and go incessantly. 
" Soo," indeed, handles about three times the ton- 
nage of Suez yearly, and there is the American side 
to add to that. 

With this brisk movement of commercial life 
within her, " Soo " has thrived like a cold. Where, 
in the old days, the local inhabitants could be 
reckoned on the fingers of two hands, there is now 
a city of about twenty thousand, and it is still grow- 
ing. It is a city of graceful streets and neat houses 
climbing over the Laurentine Hills that make the 
site. It is breezy and self-assured, and draws its 
comfortable affluence from its shipping, its paper- 
mills, its steel works, as well as from lumber, agri- 
culture and other industries. 

It met the Prince as becomes a youth of promise. 
Crowds massed on the lawns before the red sand- 
stone station, and in all the streets there were 
crowds. And crowds followed his every movement, 
however swift it was, for " Soo " has the automobile 
fever as badly as any other town in Canada, and 
car owners packed their families, even to the 
youngest in arms, into tonneaux and joined a proces- 
sion a mile long, that followed the Prince about the 
town. 

It is true that some of the crowd was America out 



146 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

to look at Royalty. Americans were not slow to 
make the most of the fact that they were to have a 
Prince across the river. From early morning the 
ferry that runs from Michigan to the British Em- 
pire was packed with Republican autos and Repub- 
licans on foot, all eager to be there when Royalty ar- 
rived. They gathered in the streets and joined in 
the procession. They gave the Prince the hearty 
greeting of good-fellows. They were as good 
friends of his as anybody there. They did, in fact, 
give us a foretaste of what we were to expect when 
the Prince went to the United States. 

There were the usual functions. They took place 
high on a hill, from which the Prince could look 
down upon the blue waters of the linked lakes, the 
many factory chimneys, the smoke of which threw a 
quickening sense of human endeavour athwart the 
scene, and the great jack-knife girder bridge, that 
is the railway connection between Canada and Amer- 
ica, but above the usual functions the visit to " Soo " 
had items that made it particularly interesting, 

He went to the great lock that carries the interlake 
traffic. He crossed from one side of it to the other, 
and then stood out on the lock gate, while it was 
opened to allow the passage of several small vessels. 
From here he went to the Algoma Railway, at the 
head of the canal, and in a special car was taken to 
the rapids that tumble down in foam between the 
two countries. 

The train was brought to a standstill at the inter- 
national boundary, where two sentries, Canadian 
and American, face each other, and where there was 



On the Road to Trout 147 

another big crowd, this time all American, to give 
him a cheer. 

He then spent some time visiting the paper mill 
that helps to make " Soo " rich. He went over it 
department by department, asking many questions 
and showing that the processes fascinated him in- 
tensely. In the same way he went through the steel 
works, and was again intrigued by the sight of 
" things doing." It was, as he said himself, one of 
the most interesting days he had spent in the Do- 
minion. 

Ill 

" Soo " let us into a wonderful tract of country. 

Still in the sumptuous C.P.R. train, we swung 
north over the Algoma Railway track into a land so 
wildly magnificent and yet so lonely, that one felt 
that the railway line must have been built by poets 
for poets — we could not imagine it thriving on any- 
thing else. 

As a matter of fact, it does link up rich mining 
and other territory, and, in time, will open a land of 
equal value, but just now its chief asset is scenery. 

The scenery is superb. Its hills are huge and 
battlemented. They leap up sheer above the train, 
menacing it; they drop down starkly, leaving the 
line clinging to a ledge above a white, angry stream 
on a white rock bed. They crowd the line into 
gorges, from which the sun is banished, and where 
the moveless firs look like lost souls chained in the 
gloom of Eblis. They expand abruptly, suddenly, 
into swinging valleys, on whose great flanks the 



148 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

spruce forests look like toy decorations hanging 
above floors of shining sapphire — lakes, of course, 
but one could not think that any lake could be so 
blue. 

Lakes fretted into lagoons by thin white slivers of 
shingle; rivers full of tumbled and dishevelled logs; 
forests in green, in which the crimson maple leaf 
burns brightly; vast amphitheatres of cliff-like hills; 
mounds of the stark Laurentine rock pushing up 
through trees like bald heads through the sparse 
covering of departing hair; miles of blanched trees 
and black trees standing like skeletons or strewn all- 
whither, like billets of stick — acres of murdered 
stumps, where evil forest fires have swept along; 
and we had even an occasional glimpse of that 
scourge of Canada seen smoking sullenly in the dis- 
tance — all this heaped together, piled together in a 
reckless luxuriance makes up the scenery of the 
Algoma country. 

Only rarely does one see the hut of rough logs 
and clay that denotes the settler, only occasionally 
is there a station, or a mill or a logging camp in this 
womb of loneliness. Only occasionally does one 
cross one of those lengthy and rakish spider bridges 
that give a hint of man and his works. 

On a long bridge, over the Montreal river, we 
made the most of man and his works. It is a 
lengthy, curving bridge, built giddily on stilts above 
the boulder-strewn bed of a wicked stream. We 
were admiring it as a desperate work of engineering, 
when the train stopped with a disconcerting bump. 
It stopped with violence. And when we had picked 



On the Road to Trout 149 

ourselves up we looked out of the train and saw noth- 
ing — only that particularly vicious river and those 
unpleasantly jagged rocks. 

When one is on a Canadian bridge this is all one 
sees — the depth one is going to drop, and what one 
is going to drop on. The top of the bridge is wide 
enough for the rails only, and the sides of the car- 
riages hang beyond the rails. And there are no 
parapets. One just looks plumb down. We looked 
down, and back and forward. The struts and 
girders of the bridge seemed made of pack-thread 
and spider's web. We wondered why we should 
have stopped in the middle of such a place of all 
places. And the train looked so enormous. We 
asked the superintendent if the bridge could hold it. 

He said he thought so, but it had never been tested 
by such a weight before. 

From the way he said " thought," we gathered he 
meant " hoped." 

Somebody had wanted to show the Prince the 
view. It was a fine view, but we were not sorry it 
wasn't permanent. With the view, the Prince took 
in a little shooting at clay pigeons in view of the days 
he was to spend in sporting Nipigon. 

We ran straight on to Nipigon, only stopping at 
Oba, and that in the night. But before the night 
came Canada and Algoma gave us an exquisite sun- 
set. We saw the light of the sun on a vast stretch 
of hummocks and hills of bald rock. They had been 
clothed with forest before the fires had passed over 
them. As the sun set, an exquisite thin cherry light 
shone evenly on the hills and bluffs, and on the thin 



150 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

and naked trees that stood up like wands in this eerie 
and clarified light. In the distance there was a faint 
vermilion in the sky, and where the tree stumps 
fringed the bare hills, they gave the suggestion of a 
band of violet edging the land. And all this in an 
air as clear and shining as still water. It seemed to 
me that Canada was waiting there for a painter of 
a new vision to catch its wonder. 

Even in the loneliness we were never far away 
from the human equation. During the afternoon we 
had a touch of it. It was discovered by the Prince 
that his train was being driven by a V.C., or, rather, 
one of the men on the engine, the fireman, was a 
V.C. This man, Staff-Sergeant Meryfield, had won 
the distinction at Cambrai, and had returned to his 
calling in the ordinary way. He came back from the 
engine cab through the train, a very modest fellow, 
to be presented to the Prince, who spent a few 
minutes chatting with him. 



CHAPTER XII 

PICNICS AND PRAIRIES 



EARLY on the morning of Friday, September 
5th, the train passed through the second tun- 
nel it had encountered in Canada, and came 
to a small stopping-place amid trees. 

It was a lady's pocket handkerchief of a station, 
made up of a tool shed, a few houses and a road 
leading away from it. Its significance lay in the 
road leading away from it. That road leads to 
Nipigon river and lake, one of the finest trout waters 
in Canada. Even at that it is only famous half the 
year, for it hibernates in winter like any other thing 
in Canada that finds snow and remoteness too much 

for it. 

At this station — Nipigon Lodge — the Prince, in 
shooting knickers and a great anxiety to be off and 
away, left the train at 8.30, and walking along the 
road, came to the launch that was to take him down 
river to the fishing camp where he was to spend a 
week-end of sport. 

Leaving this little waterside village of neglected 
fishermen's huts, for the season was late and the 
tourists that usually fill them had all gone, he went 
down the beautiful stream to the more than beautiful 
Virgin Falls. Here he met his outfit, thirty-eight 

151 



152 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Indian guides, all of them experts in camp life and 
cunning in the secrets of stream and wood. 

In the care of these high priests of sport, he left 
civilization, in the shape of the launch, behind him, 
and in a canoe fished down stream until the lovely 
reaches of Split-rock were attained; here, on the 
banks of the stream, amid the thick ranks of spruce, 
the camp was pitched. 

At first it had been the intention to push on after 
a day's sport to other camping-places, but the situa- 
tion and the comfort of this camp was so satisfactory 
that the Prince decided to stay, and made it his head- 
quarters during the week-end. 

It was no camp of amateur sportsmen playing at 
the game. It was not, perhaps, " roughing " it as 
the woodsman knows it, for he lies hard in a floor- 
less tent (if he has one), as well as lives laboriously, 
but it was certainly a rough and ready life, as near 
that of the woodsman as possible. 

The Prince slept in a tent, rose early, bathed in the 
river and shaved in the open in exactly the same 
manner as every one else in the party. He took his 
place in the " grub queue," carrying his plate to the 
cook-house and demanding his particular choice in 
bacon and eggs, broiled trout, flapjacks, or the 
wonderful white flatbread, which the cook, an 
Indian, Jimmy Bouchard, celebrated for open-fire 
cooking, knew how to prepare. 

Sometimes before breakfast the Prince indulged 
his passion for running; always after breakfast he 
set out on foot, or in canoe for the day's fishing, re- 
turning late at night hungry and tired with the 



Picnics and Prairies 153 

healthy weariness of hard exertion to the camp meal. 
There were spells round the big camp fire burning 
vividly amid the trees, and then sleep in the tent. 

The fishing was usually done from the bass canoe, 
two Indian guides being always the ship's company. 
And fishing was not the only attraction of the stream 
and lake. There is always the thrilling, placid beauty 
of the scenery, the deep forests, the lake valleys, 
and the austere, forest-clad hills that rise abruptly 
from the enigmatic pools. And there is the active 
beauty of the many rapids, those piled-up and rush- 
ing masses of angry water, tossing and foaming in 
pent-up force through rock gates and over rocks. 

He tried the adventure of these rapids, shooting 
through the tortured waters that look so beautiful 
from the shore and so terrible from the frail struc- 
ture of a canoe, until it seemed to him as though not 
even the skill of his guides could steer through safely. 
He got through safely, but only after an experience 
which he described as the most exciting in his life. 

The fishing itself proved disappointing. The 
famous speckled trout of Nipigon did not rise to the 
occasion, and the sport was fair, but not extraordin- 
ary. The best day brought in twenty-seven fish, 
the largest being three and a half pounds, not a 
good specimen of the lake's trout, which go to six 
and eight pounds in the ordinary course of things. 

And the disappointment had an irony of its own. 
The man who caught the most fish was the man who 
couldn't fish at all. The official photographer, who 
had gone solely to take snapshots, also took the 
maximum of fish out of the river. Indeed, he was so 



154 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

much of an amateur that the first fish he caught 
placed him in such a predicament that he did not 
play it, but landed it with so vigorous a jerk that it 
flew over his head and caught high in a fir. An 
Indian guide had to climb the tree to " land " it. 

Nevertheless, he caught the most fish, and when he 
returned with his spoil, the Prince said to him: 

" Look here, don't you realize I'm the one to do 
that? You're taking my place in the program." 

The reason for the indifferent sport was probably 
the lateness of the season — it was practically fin- 
ished when the Prince arrived — and the fact that 
Nipigon had had a record summer, with large parties 
of sportsmen working its reaches steadily all the 
time. The fish were certainly shy, particularly, it 
seemed, of fly, and the best catches were made with 
a small fish, a sort of bull-headed minnow called 
cocatoose, that creeps about close to the rocks. 

Of course, trout, even if famous, are naturally 
temperamental. They will rise in dozens at unex- 
pected times, just as they will refuse all temptations 
for weeks on end. An Englishman, and no mean 
fisherman, once went to Nipigon to show the local 
inhabitants how fishing should be done. A master 
in British waters, he considered the speckled 
monsters of the lakes fit victims for his rod and fly. 
He went out with his guides to catch fish, and after 
a few days among the big trout came back disgusted. 

" Did you catch any trout? " he was asked by one 
of his party. 

" Catch 'em," he snapped. " How can one catch 
'em? The infernal things are anchored." 



Picnics and Prairies 155 



Walking and duck shooting was also in the pro- 
gram, and there were other excitements. 

The weather, delightful during the first two days, 
broke on Sunday, and there were bad winds, rain- 
storms and occasional hailstorms, when stones as big 
as small pebbles drummed on the tents and bom- 
barded the camp. 

So fierce was the wind that the Royal Standard 
on a high flagstaff was carried away. A pine tree 
was also uprooted, and fell with a crash between the 
Prince's tent and that of one of his suite. A yard 
either way and the tent would have been crushed. 
Fortunately the Prince was not in the tent at that 
moment, but the happening gave the camp its sense 
of adventure. 

During this rest, too, the Prince suffered a little 
from his eyes, an irritation caused by grains of steel 
that had blown into them while viewing the works 
at " Soo." His right hand was also painful from 
the heartiness of Toronto, and the knuckles swollen. 
To set these matters right, the doctor went up from 
the train, and by the Indian canoe that carried the 
mail and the daily news bulletin, reached the camp. 
When he returned on Monday, September 8th, 
the Prince was looking undeniably fit. He marched 
up the railway from the lake in footer-shorts and 
golf jacket, with an air of one who had thoroughly 
enjoyed " roughing it." 

II 

While the Prince and his party were camping, the 
train remained in Nipigon, a tiny village set in com- 



156 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

plete isolation on the edge of the river and in the 
heart of the woods. 

It is a little germ-culture of humanity cut off from 
the world. The only way out is, apparently, the rail- 
way, though, perhaps, one could get away by the 
boats that come up to load pulp wood, or by the 
petrol launches that scurry out on to Lake Superior 
and its waterside towns. But the roads out of it, 
there appear to be none. Follow any track, and it 
fades away gently into the primitive bush. 

It is a nest of loneliness that has carried on after 
its old office as a big fur collecting post — you see 
the original offices of Revillon Freres and the Hud- 
son Bay Company standing today — has gone. 
Now it lives on lumber and the fishing, and one 
wonders what else. 

Its tiny station, through which the Transcontin- 
ental trains thunder, is faced by a long, straggling 
green, and fringing the green is a row of wooden 
shops and houses equally straggling. They have a 
somnolent and spiritless air. Behind is a wedge of 
pretty dwellings stretching down to the river, tailing 
off into an Indian encampment by the stream, where, 
about dingy tepees, a dozen or so stoic children play. 

There are three hundred souls in the village, 
mainly Finns and Indians become Canadians. They 
are not the Indians of Fenimore Cooper, but men 
who wear peaked caps, bright blouse shirts or 
sweaters, with broad yellow, blue and white stripes 
(a popular article of wear all over Canada), and 
women who wear the shin skirts and silks of civiliza- 
tion. Only here and there one sees old squaw 



Picnics and Prairies 157 

women, stout and brown and bent, with the plaid 
shawl of modernity making up for the moccasins of 
their ancient race. 

Small though it is, or perhaps because it is so small 
and observable, Nipigon is an example of the am- 
algam from which the Canadian race is being fused. 
We went, for instance, to a dance given by the Finns 
in their varnished, brown-wood hall on the Saturday 
night. It was an attractive and interesting evening. 
The whole of the village, without distinction, ap- 
peared to be there. And they mixed. Indian 
women in the silk stockings, high heels and glowing 
frocks of suburbia, danced (and danced well) with 
high cheek-boned, monosyllabic Finns in grey sweat- 
ers, workaday trousers and coats and bubble-toed 
boots. A vivid Canadian girl in semi-evening dress 
went round in the jazz with a guard of the Royal 
train. A policeman from the train danced with a 
Finnish girl, demur and well-dressed, who might have 
been anything from the leader of local Society to a 
clerk (i.e., a counter hand) in one of the shops. 
For all we knew, the plumber might have been danc- 
ing with the leading citizen's daughter, and the local 
Astor with the local dressmaker's assistant. 

In any case, it didn't matter. In Canada they 
don't think about that sort of thing. They were all 
unconcerned and happy in the big, generous spirit of 
equality that makes Canada the home of one big 
family rather than the dwelling-place of different 
classes and social grades. This fact was not new to 
us; naturally, we had seen and mixed with Canadians 
in hotels and on the street elsewhere. In those 



158 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

gathering-places of humanity, the hotels, we had 
lived with the big, jolly, homely crowds without 
social strata, who might very well have changed 
places with the waiters and the waiters with them 
without anybody noticing any difference. That 
would not have meant a loss of dignity to anybody. 
Nobody has any use for social status in the Domin- 
ion, the only standard being whether a man is a 
" mixer " or not. 

By way of a footnote, I might say that waiters, 
even as waiters, are on the way to take seats as 
guests, since, apparently, waiting is only an occupa- 
tion a man takes up until he finds something worth 
while. Not unexpectedly Canadian waiting suffers 
through this. 

What we had seen in the large towns, and in the 
large gregarious life of cities, we saw " close up " at 
Nipigon. The varied crowd, Finns, British, Cana- 
dian and Indian (one of the Indians, a young dandy, 
had served with distinction during the war, had 
married a white Canadian, and was one of the richest 
men present), danced without social distinctions in 
that pleasant hall to Finn folk-songs that had never 
been set down on paper played on an accordion. It 
was a delightful evening. 

For the rest, those with the train fished (or, 
rather, went through all the ritual with little of the 
results), walked, bathed in the lake, watched the 
American " movie " men in their endeavours to con- 
vert the British to baseball, or endeavoured, with as 
little success, to convert the baseball " fans " to 
cricket. The recreations of Nipigon were not hectic, 



Picnics and Prairies 159 

and we were glad to get on to towns and massed life 
again. 

I confess our view of Nipigon of the hundred 
houses was not that of the Indian boy who dis- 
cussed it with us. He told us Nipigon was not the 
place for him. 

" You wait," he said. " Next year I go. Next 
year I am fifteen. Then I go out into the woods. 
I go right away. I can't stand this city life." 



Ill 

Canada, on Monday, September 8th, demon- 
strated its amazing faculty for startling contrasts. 
It lifted the Prince from the primitive to the ultra- 
modern in a single movement. In the morning he 
was in the silent forests of Nipigon, a tract so wild 
that man seemed no nearer than a thousand miles. 
Three hours later he was moving amid the dense 
crowds that filled the streets of the latest word in 
industrial cities. 

He stepped straight from Nipigon to the twin 
cities of Port Arthur and Fort William. These two 
cities are really one, and together form the great 
trade pool into which the traffic of the vast grain- 
bearing West and North-West pours for transport 
on the Great Lakes. 

These two cities sprang from the little human 
nucleus made up of a Jesuit mission and a Hudson 
Bay Company depot of the old days. They stand on 
Thunder Bay, a deep-water sack thrusting out from 
Lake Superior under the slopes of flat-topped 



160 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Thunder Cape. The situation is ideal for handling 
the trade of the great lake highway that swings the 
traffic through the heart of the Western continent. 

Port Arthur and Fort William have seen their 
chances and made the most of them. They have 
constructed great wharves along the bay to accommo- 
date a huge traffic. Over the wharves they have 
built up the greatest grain elevators in the world, 
not a few of them but a series, until the cities seemed 
to be inhabited solely by these giants. These ele- 
vators and stores collect and distribute the vast 
streams of grain that pour in from the prairies, at 
whose door the cities stand, distributing it across 
the lakes to the cities of America, or along the lakes 
to the Canadian East and the railways that tranship 
it to Europe. 

On the quays are the towering lattices of patent 
derricks, forests of them, that handle coal and 
ore and cargoes of infinite variety. And the 
derricks and the elevators are the uncannily long and 
lean lake freighters, ships with a tiny deck superstruc- 
ture forward of a great rake of hold, and a tiny 
engine-house astern under the stack. And by these 
grain boats are the ore tramps and coal boats from 
Lake Erie, and cargo boats with paper pulp for 
England made in the big mills that turn the forests 
about Lake Superior into riches. 

Not content with docking boats, the twin cities 
build them. They build with equal ease a 10,000- 
ton freighter, or a great sky-scraping tourist boat to 
ply between Canada and the American shores. And 
presently it will be sending its 10,000-tonners direct 



Picnics and Prairies 161 

to Liverpool; they only await the deepening of the 
Welland Canal near Niagara before starting a regu- 
lar service on this 4,000-mile voyage. 

They are modern cities, indeed, that snatch every 
chance for wealth and progress, and use even the 
power that Nature gives in numerous falls to work 
their dynamos, and through them their many mills 
and factories. And the marvel of these cities is that 
they are inland cities — inland ports thousands of 
miles from the nearest salt water. 

These places gave the Prince the welcome of ar- 
dent twins. Their greeting was practically one, for 
though the train made two stops, and there were two 
sets of functions, there are only a few minutes' train- 
time between them, and the greetings seemed of a 
continuous whole. 

Port Arthur had the Prince first for a score of 
minutes, in which crowds about the station showed 
their welcome in the Canadian way. It was here 
we first came in touch with the " Mounties," the fine 
men of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, 
whose scarlet coats, jaunty stetsons, blue breeches 
and high tan boots set off the carriage of an excel- 
lently set-up body of men. They acted as escort 
while the Prince drove into the town to a charming 
collegiate garden, where the Mayor tried to welcome 
him formally. 

Tried is the only word. How could Prince or 
Mayor be formal when both stood in the heart of a 
crowd so close together that when the Mayor read 
his address the document rested on the Prince's chest, 
while at the Prince's elbows crowded little boys and 



162 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

other distinguished citizens? Formal or not, it was 
very human and very pleasant. 

Returning through the town, something went 
wrong with the procession. Many of the automo- 
biles forcing their way through the crowd to the train 
— which stood beside the street — found there was 
no Prince. We stood about asking what was hap- 
pening and where it was happening. After ten min- 
utes of this an automobile driver strolled over from 
a car and asked " what was doing now? " 

We consulted the programs and told him that 
the Prince was launching a ship. 

" He is, is he? " said the driver without passion. 
" Well, I've got members of the shipbuilding com- 
pany and half the reception committee in my car." 

In spite of that, the Prince launched a fine boat, 
that took the water broadside in the lake manner, 
before going on to Fort William. 

Fort William had an immense crowd upon the 
green before the station, on the station, and even on 
the station buildings. Part of the crowd was made 
up of children, each one of them a representative of 
the nationalities that came from the Old World to 
find a new life and a new home in Canada. Each 
of them was dressed in his or her national costume, 
making an interesting picture. 

There were twenty-four children, each of a differ- 
ent race, and the races ranged from France to Slov- 
enia, from Persia to China and Syria. There were 
negroes and Siamese and Czecho-Slovaks in this re- 
markable collection of elements from whose fusion 
Canada of today is being fashioned. 



Picnics and Prairies 163 



The Prince drove through the cheering streets of 
Fort William, and paid visits to some of the great 
industrial concerns, before setting out for Winnipeg 
and the wide-flung spaces of the West. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE CITY OF WHEAT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 



WE had a hint of what the Western welcome 
was going to be like from the Winnipeg 
papers that were handed to us with our 
cantaloupe at breakfast on Tuesday, September 9th. 
They were concerning themselves brightly and 
strenuously with the details of the visit that day, 
and were also offering real Western advice on the 
etiquette of clothes. 

" SILK LIDS AND STRIPED PANTS FOR 
THE BIG DAY " 

formed the main headline, taking the place of space 
usually given to Baseball reports or other vital news. 
And pen pictures of Western thrill were given of 
leading men chasing in and out of the stores of the 
town in an attempt to buy a " Silk Lid " (a top hat) 
in order to be fit to figure at receptions. 

The writer had even broken into verse to describe 
the emotions of the occasion. Despairing of prose 
he wrote: 

Get out the old silk bonnet, 
Iron a new shine on it. 

Just pretend your long-tailed coat does not seem queer, 

164 



The City of Wheat 165 

For we'll be all proper 

As a crossing " copper " 

When the Prince of Wales is here. 

The Ladies' Page also caught the infection. It 
crossed its page with a wail: 

"GIRLS! OH, GIRLS! SILVER SLIPPERS 
CANNOT BE HAD!" 

and it went on for columns to tell how silver slippers 
were the only kind the Prince would look at. He 
had chosen all partners at all balls in all towns by 
the simple method of looking for silver slippers. 
The case of those without silver slippers was hope- 
less. The maidens of Winnipeg well knew this. 
There had been a silver slipper battue through all 
the stores, and all had gone — it was, so one felt 
from the article, a crisis for all those who had been 
slow. 

A rival paper somewhat calmed the anxious citi- 
zens by stating that the Silk Lid and the Striped 
Pants were not necessities, and that the Prince him- 
self did not favour formal dress — a fact, for in- 
deed, he preferred himself the informality of a grey 
lounge suit always, when not wearing uniform, and 
did not even trouble to change for dinner unless at- 
tending a function. The paper also hinted that he 
had eyes for other things in partners besides silver 
slippers. 

These papers gave us an indication that not only 
would " Winnipeg be polished to the heels of its 
shoes " at the coming of the Prince, but to continue 



166 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the metaphor, it would be enthusiastic to well above 
its hat-band. And it was. 



II 

Certainly Winnipeg's welcome did not stop at the 
huge mass of heels — high as well as low — that 
carried it out to look at the Prince on his arrival. 
It mounted well up to the heart and to the head as he 
left the wide-open space in front of the C.P.R. sta- 
tion, and, with a brave escort of red-tuniced 
" Mounties," swung into the old pioneer trail — 
only it is called Main Street now — toward the 
Town Hall. 

The exceedingly broad street was lined with im- 
mense crowds, that, on the whole, kept their ranks 
like a London rather than a Canadian throng for at 
least two hundred yards. 

Then this imported docility gave way, and the 
press of people became entirely Canadian. The es- 
sential spirit of the Canadian, like that of the citizen 
of another country, is that " he will be there.'* 
Or perhaps I should say he " will be right there." 
Anyhow, there he was as close to the Prince as he 
could get without actually climbing into the carriage 
that was slowing down before the dais among trees 
in the garden before the City Hall. 

In a minute where there had been a broad open 
space lined with neat policemen, there was a swamp- 
ing mass of Canadians of all ages, and the Prince 
was entirely hemmed in. In fact only a free fight 
of the most amiable kind got him out of the carriage 



The City of Wheat 167 



and on to the dais. The Marine orderlies, and 
others of the suite, joined in an attempt to press the 
throng back. They could accomplish nothing until 
the " Mounties " came to their aid, forced a pass- 
age with their horses, and so permitted the Prince 
to mount the dais and hear the Mayor say what the 
crowd had been explaining for the past ten minutes, 
that is, how glad Winnipeg was to see him. 

It was the usual function, but varied a little. 
Winnipeg has not always been happy in the matter 
of its water supply, and the day and the Prince came 
together to inaugurate a new era. It was accomp- 
lished in the modern manner. The Prince pressed 
a button on the platform and water-gates on Shoal 
Lake outside the city swung open. In a minute or 
two a dry fountain in the gardens before the Prince 
threw up a jet of water. The new water had come 
to Winnipeg. 

Through big crowds on the sidewalks he passed 
through an avenue of fine, tall and modern stores, 
along Broadway, where the tram-tracks fringed with 
grass and trees run down the centre of a wide boule- 
vard that is edged with lawns and trees, and so to 
the new Parliament Buildings. 

Here there was a vivid and shining scene before 
the great white curtain of a classic building not yet 

finished. 

In the wide forecourt was a mass of children bear- 
ing flags, and up the great flight of steps leading to 
the impressive Corinthian porch was a bank of peo- 
ple, jewelled with flags and vivid in gay dresses. 
Against the sharp white mass of the building this 



168 Westward zvith the Prince of Wales 

living, thrilling bed of humanity made an unforget- 
table picture. 

The ceremony in the spacious entrance hall was 
also full of the movement and colour of life. In the 
massive square hall stairs spring upward to the gal- 
lery on which the Prince stood. On the level of 
each floor galleries were cut out of the solid stone 
of the walls. Crowded in these galleries were men 
and women, who looked down the shaft of this 
austere chamber upon a grouping of people about 
the foot of the cold, white ascending stairs. The 
strong, clear light added to the dramatic dignity of 
the scene. 

The groups moved up the white stairs slowly be- 
tween the ranks of Highlanders, whose uniforms 
took on a vividity in the clarified light. The Prince 
in Guard's uniform, with his suite in blue and gold 
and khaki and red behind him, stood on the big 
white stage of the stair-head to receive them. It 
was a scene that had all the tone and all the circum- 
stances of an Eastern levee. 

But it was a levee with a fleck of humour, also. 

As he turned to leave, the Prince noticed beside 
him a handsome armchair upholstered in royal blue. 
It was a strange, lonely chair in that desert of gallery 
and standing humanity. It was a chair that needed 
explaining. 

In characteristic fashion the Prince bent down to 
it to find an explanation. The crowd, knowing all 
about that chair and understanding his puzzlement, 
began to laugh. It laughed outright and with sym- 
pathetic humour when, abruptly handing his Guards' 



The City of Wheat 169 



cap to one of his staff, he solemnly sat down in it for 
a second instead of going his way. 

The chair was the chair his father and grandfather 
had sat in when they came to Winnipeg. Silver 
medallions on it gave testimony to facts. The 
Prince had not time to adopt a fully considered sit- 
ting, but he was not going to leave the building until 
he, too, had registered his claim to it. 

In the big Campus that fronts the University of 
Manitoba, and ranked by thousands in a hollow 
square, were the veterans in khaki and civies who 
had fought as comrades of the Prince in the war. 
To these he went next. 

It was a lengthy ceremony, for there were many 
to inspect. There were Canadian Highlanders and 
riflemen in the square, as well as veterans dating 
back to the time of the North-West Rebellion of '85. 
And there was also the regimental goat of the 5th 
West Canadians, a big, husky fellow, who endeav- 
oured to take control of the ceremony with his horns, 
as befitted a veteran who sported four service chev- 
rons and a wound stripe. 

Here, too, the crowd was the most stirring and 
remarkable feature of the ceremony. It began with 
an almost European placidity of decorum, standing 
quietly behind the wooden railing on three sides of 
the Campus, and as quietly filling the seats in and 
about the glowingly draped grand stand before the 
University building. As the ceremony proceeded, 
however, the crowd behind the stand pressed for- 
ward, getting out on to the field. Soldiers linked 
arms to keep it back, soldiers with bayonets were 



170 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

drawn from the ranks of veterans to give additional 
weight, wise men mounted the stand and strove to 
stem the forward pressure with logic. But that 
crowd was filled with much the same spirit that 
made the sea so difficult a thing to reason with in 
King Canute's day. Neither soldiers nor words of 
the wise could check it. It flowed forward into the 
Campus, a sea of men and women, shop girls not 
caring a fig if they were " late back " and had a 
half-day docked, children who swarmed amid Olym- 
pian legs, babies in mothers' arms, whose presence 
in that crush was a matter of real terror to us less 
hardened British — an impetuous mass of young 
and old, masculine and feminine life that cared noth- 
ing for hard elbows and torn clothes as long as it 
got close to the Prince. 

Before the inspection was finished, before the 
Prince could get back to the stand to present medals, 
the Campus was no longer a hollow square, it was 
a packed throng. 

And the crowd, having won this vantage, took 
matters into its own hands until, indeed, its ardour 
began to verge on the dangerous. 

As the Prince left the field the great crowd swept 
after him, until the whole mass was jammed tight 
against the iron railings at the entrance of the Cam- 
pus. The Prince was in the heart of this throng 
surrounded by police who strove to force a way out 
for him. The crowd fought as heartily to get at 
him. There was a wild moment when the throng 
charged forward and crashed the iron railings 
down with their weight and force. 



The City of Wheat 171 

There were cries of ''Shoulder him! Shoulder 
the boy! " and a rush was made towards him. The 
police had a hard struggle to keep the people back, 
and, as it was, it was only the swift withdrawal of the 
Prince from the scene that averted trouble; for in a 
crowd that had got slightly out of hand in its en- 
thusiasm, the presence of so many children and 
women seemed to spell calamity. 

This splendid ardour is more remarkable, since, 
only a few months before, Winnipeg had been the 
scene of an outburst which its citizens describe as 
nothing else but Bolshevik. 

That outcrop of active discontent — which, by the 
way, was germinated in part by Englishmen — had a 
loud and ugly sound, and its clamour seemed 
ominous. People asked whether all the West, and 
indeed, all Canada, was going to be involved. Was 
Canada speaking in the accents of revolt? 

Well, on September 9th, there arose another sound 
in Winnipeg, and it was but part of a wave of sound 
that had been travelling westward for more than 
a month. It was, I think, a most significant sound. 
It was the sound of majorities expressing them- 
selves. 

It was not a few shouting revolt. It was the 
many shouting its affection and loyalty for tried 
democratic ideals. 

When minorities raise their voices our ears are 
dinned by the shouting and we imagine it is a whole 
people speaking. We forget those who sit silent at 
home, not joining in the storm. The silent mass of 
the majority is overlooked because it finds so few op- 



172 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

portunities for self-expression. Only such a visit 
as this of the Prince gives them a chance. 

It seemed to me that this display of affection had 
a human rather than a political significance. It im- 
pressed me not as an affair of parties, but as the 
fundamental, human desire of the great mass of 
ordinary workaday people to show their appreciation 
for stable and democratic ideals which the peculiarly 
democratic individuality of the Prince represents. 



Ill 

Winnipeg is a town with a vital spirit. It has a 
large air. There is something in its spaciousness 
that tells of the great grain plains at the threshold 
of which it stands. It is the " Chicago of Canada," 
and hub of a world of grain, Queen City in the King- 
dom of Bakers' Flour. And it is mightily conscious 
of its high office. 

It springs upward out oi the flat and brooding 
prairies, where the Assiniboine and the strong Red 
River strike together — the old "Forks" of the 
pioneer days. It sits where the old trails of the 
pathfinder and the fur trader join, and its very streets 
grew up about those trails. 

From the piles of pelts dumped by Indians and 
hunters outside the old Hudson Bay stockade at 
Fort Garry, and the sacks of raw grain that the old 
prairie schooners brought in, Winnipeg of today 
has grown up. 

And it has grown up with the astonishing, swift 
maturity of the West. Fifty years ago there was 



The City of Wheat 173 

not even a village. Forty years ago it was a mere 
spot on the world map, put there only to indicate the 
locality of Louis Riel's Red River Rebellion, and 
Wolseley's march to Fort Garry, as its name was. 
In 1 88 1 it became just Winnipeg, a townlet with less 
than 8,000 souls in it. Today it ranks with the 
greatest commercial cities in Canada, and its great- 
ness can be felt in the tingling energy of its streets. 

The wonder of that swift growth is a thing that 
can be brought directly home. I stood on the sta- 
tion with a man old but still active, and he said to me : 

" Do you see that block of buildings over there? 
I had the piece of ground on which it was built. I 
sold it for a hundred dollars, it was prairie then. 
It's worth many thousands now. And that piece 
where that big factory stands, that was mine. I let 
that go for under three hundred, and the present 
owners bought in the end for twenty and more times 
that sum. Oh, we were all foolish then, how could 
we tell that Winnipeg was going to grow? It was a 
4 back-block ' town, shacks along a dusty track. And 
the railway hadn't come. A three-story wooden 
house, that was a marvel to be sure; now we have 
skyscrapers." 

And fast though Winnipeg has grown, or because 
she has grown at such a pace, one can still see the 
traces and feel the spirit of the old spacious days in 
her streets. They are long streets and so planned 
that they seem to have been built by men who knew 
that there were no limits on the immense plains, and 
so broad that one knows that the designers had been 
conscious that there was no need to pinch the side- 



174 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

walks and carriage-ways with all the prairie at the 
back of them. 

Along these sumptuous avenues there still remain 
many of the low-built and casual houses that men put 
up in the early days, and it is these standing beside 
the modernity of the business buildings, soaring 
sky-high, the massive grain elevators and the big 
brisk mills that give the city its curious blending 
of pioneer days and thrusting, twentieth-century 
virility. 

It is a town like no other that we had visited, and 
where one had the feeling that up-to-date card-in- 
dexing systems were being worked by men in the 
woolly riding chaps of old plainsmen. 

In the people of the streets one experienced the 
same curious sense of " difference." In splendid 
boulevards such as Main, and Portage, which turns 
from it, there are stores worthy of New York and 
London in size, smartness and glowing attraction. 
And the women crowds that make these streets busy 
are as crisply dressed in modern fashions as any on 
the Continent, but there is a definite individuality in 
the air of the men. 

Canadian men dress with a conspicuous indiffer- 
ence. They wear anything from overalls and broad- 
banded sweaters to lounge suits that ever seem ill- 
fitting. In Winnipeg there is the same disregard 
for personal appearance plus a hat with a higher 
crown. As we went West the crown of the soft hat 
climbed higher, and the brim became both wider and 
more curly. 

There is, too, on the sidewalks of Winnipeg the 



The City of Wheat 175 



conglomeration of races that go to feed the West. 
The city is the great emigrant centre that serves the 
farmers, the fruit-growers of the Rockies, the 
ranchmen in the foothills, and even the industries on 
the Pacific Slopes. Everywhere outside agencies 
there are great blackboards on which demands for 
farm labourers at five dollars a day and other 
workers are chalked. 

To these agencies flow strange men in blouse- 
shirts, wearing strange caps — generally of fur — 
carrying strange-looking suit-cases and speaking the 
strange tongues of far European or Asiatic lands. 
Chinese and Japanese (whom the Canadian lumps 
under the general term "Orientals"), negroes, a 
few Indians, and a hotch-potch of races walk the 
streets of Winnipeg, and Winnipeg deals with them, 
houses them, gives them advice, and distributes them 
over the wide lands of Canada, where they will work 
and working will gradually fuse into the racial whole 
that is the Canadian race. 

In the hotels, too, one notices that a change is 
taking place. The " Oriental " — the Japanese in 
this case — takes the place of the Canadian bell-boy 
and porter, and he takes this place more and more 
as one goes West. There are, of course, always 
Chinese " Chop Suey and Noodles' Restaurants," as 
well as Chinese laundries in Canadian towns; we 
met them as early as St. Johns, Newfoundland; 
but from Winnipeg to the Pacific Coast these estab- 
lishments grow in numbers, until in Vancouver and 
Victoria there are big " Oriental " quarters — cities 
within the cities that harbour them. 



176 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

The " Orientals " make good citizens, the Chinese 
particularly. They are industrious, clever workers, 
especially as agriculturists, and they give no trouble. 
The great drawback with them is that they do not 
stay in the country, but having made their money in 
Canada, go home to China to spend it. 

Most of the alien element that goes to Canada is 
of good quality, and ultimately becomes a very 
valuable asset. But the problem Canada is facing 
is that they are strangers, and, not having been 
brought up in the British tradition, they know noth- 
ing of it. The tendency of this influence is to pro- 
duce a new race to which the ties of sentiment and 
blood have little meaning. 

It is a problem which Britain must share also, if 
we do not wish to see Canada growing up a stranger 
to us in texture, ideals and thought. It is not an 
easy problem. Canada's chief need today is for 
agriculturists, yet the workers we wish to retain 
most in this country are agriculturists. Canada 
must have her supply, and if we cannot afford them, 
she must take what she can from Eastern Europe, or 
from America, and very many American farmers, 
indeed, are moving up to Canadian lands. 

There is always room in a vast country such as 
Canada for skilled or willing workers, and we can 
send them. But the demand is not great at present, 
and will not be great until the agriculturist opens 
up the land. And the agriculturist is to come from 
w 7 here ? 

Certainly it is a matter which calls for a great 
deal of consideration. 



The City of Wheat 177 

IV 

The Prince made the usual round of the usual 
program during his stay, but his visit to the Grain 
Exchange was an item that was unique. 

He drove on Wednesday, September 10th, to 
this dramatic place, where brokers, apparently in 
a frenzy, shout and wave their hands, while the 
price of grain sinks and rises like a trembling 
balance at their gestures and shouts. 

The pit at which all these hustling buyers and 
sellers are gathered has all the romantic qualities 
of fiction. It is, as far as I am concerned, one of 
the few places that live up to the written pictures 
of it, for it gave me the authentic thrill that had 
come to me when I first read of the Chicago wheat 
transactions in Frank Norris's novel, " The Pit." 

The Prince drove to the Grain Exchange and was 
whirled aloft to the fourth story of the tall build- 
ing. He entered a big hall in which babel with 
modern improvements and complications reigned. 

In the centre of this tjoom was the pit proper. 
It has nothing of the Stygian about it. It is a 
hexagon of shallow steps rising from the floor, and 
descending on the inner side. 

On these steps was a crowd of super-men with 
voices of rolled steel. They called out cabalistic 
formulae of which the most intelligible to the lay- 
man sounded something like : 

" May — eighty-three — quarter." 

Cold, high and terrible voices seemed to answer: 

" Taken." 



178 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Hundreds of voices were doing this, amid a storm 
of cross shoutings, and under a cloud of tossing 
hands, that signalled with fingers or with papers. 
Cutting across this whirlpool of noise was the frantic 
clicking of telegraph instruments. These tickers 
were worked by four emotionless gods sitting high 
up in a judgment seat over the pit. 

They had unerring ears. They caught the sepa- 
rate quotations from the seething maelstrom of 
sound beneath them, sifted the completed deal from 
the mere speculative offer in uncanny fashion, and 
with their unresting fingers ticked the message off on 
an instrument that carried it to a platform high up 
on one of the walls. 

On this platform men in shirt-sleeves prowled 
backwards and forwards — as the tigers do about 
feeding time in the Zoo. They, too, had super-hear- 
ing. From little funnels that looked like electric 
light shades they caught the tick of the messages, and 
chalked the figures of the latest prices as they altered 
with the dealing on the floor upon a huge blackboard 
that made the wall behind them. 

At the same time the gods on the rostrum were 
tapping messages to the four corners of the world. 
Even Chicago and Mark Lane altered their prices 
as the finger of one of these calm men worked his 
clicker. 

When the Prince entered the room the gong 
sounded to close the market, and amid a hearty 
volume of cheering he was introduced to the pit, and 
some of its intricacies were explained to him. The 
gong sounded again, the market opened, and a storm 



The City of Wheat 179 

of shouting broke over him, men making and ac- 
cepting deals over his head. 

Intrigued by the excitement, he agreed with the 
broker who had brought him in, to accept the ex- 
perience of making a flutter in grain. 

Immediately there were yells, " What is he, Bull 
or Bear?" and the Prince, thoroughly perplexed, 
turned to the broker and asked what type of finan- 
cial mammal he might be. 

He became a Bull and bought. 

He did not endeavour to corner wheat in the 
manner of the heroes of the stories, for wheat was 
controlled; he bought, instead, fifty thousand bushels 
of oats. A fair deal, and he told those about him 
with a smile that he was going to make several 
thousand dollars out of Winnipeg in a very few 
moments. 

An onlooker pointed to the blackboard, and 
cried: 

" What about that? Oats are falling." 

But the broker was a wise man. He had avoided 
a royal " crash." He had already sold at the same 
price, 83^2, and the Prince had accomplished what 
is called a " cross trade." That is he had squared 
the deal and only lost his commission. 

While he stood in that frantic pit of whirling 
voices something of the vast transactions of the 
Grain Exchange was explained to him. It is the 
biggest centre for the receipt and sale of wheat di- 
rectly off the land in the world. It handles grain 
by the million bushels. In the course of a day, so 
swift and thorough are its transactions, it can manip- 



i8o Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ulate deals aggregating anything up to 150,000,000 
bushels. 

When these details had been put before him, the 
gong was again struck, and silence came magically. 

Unseen by most in that pack of men on the steps 
the Prince was heard to say that he had come to the 
conclusion that to master the intricacies of the Ex- 
change was a science rather beyond his grasp just 
then. He hoped that his trip westward would give 
him a more intimate knowledge of the facts about 
grain, and when he came back, as he hoped he 
would, he might have it in him to do something bet- 
ter than a " cross trade." 

From the pit the lift took him aloft again to the 
big sampling and classifying room on the tenth floor 
of the building. The long tables of this room were 
littered with small bags of grain, and with grain in 
piles undergoing tests. The floor was strewn with 
spilled wheat and oats and corn. Here he was 
shown how grain, carried to Winnipeg in the long 
trucks, was sampled and brought to this room in 
bags. Here it was classified by experts, who, by 
touch, taste and smell, could gauge its quality un- 
erringly. 

It is the perfection of a system for handling grain 
in the raw mass. The buyer never sees the grain 
he purchases. The classification of the Exchange is 
so reliable that he accepts its certificates of quality 
and weight and buys on paper alone. 

Nor are the dealers ever delayed by this wonder- 
fully working organization. The Exchange has 
samplers down on the trucks at the railway sidings 



The City of Wheat 181 

day and night. During the whole twenty-four 
hours of the day there are men digging specially 
constructed scoops that take samples from every 
level of the car-loads of grain, putting the grain into 
the small bags, and sending them along to the classi- 
fication department. 

So swiftly is the work done that the train can 
pull into the immense range of special yards, such as 
those the C.P.R. have constructed for the accom- 
modation of grain, change its engine and crew, and 
by the time the change is effected, samples of all the 
trucks have been taken, and the train can go on to 
the great elevators and mills at Fort William and 
Port Arthur. 

This rapid handling in no way affects the efficiency 
of the Exchange. Its decisions are so sure that the 
grading of the wheat is only disputed about forty 
times in the year. This is astonishing when one 
realizes the enormous number of samples judged. 

In the same way, and in spite of the apparent con- 
fusion about the pit where they take place, the 
records of the transactions are so exact that only 
about once in five thousand is such a record queried. 

The Prince was immensely interested in all the 
practical details of working which make this hand- 
ling of grain a living and dramatic thing, showing, as 
usual, that active curiosity for workaday facts that 
is essential to the make-up of the moderns. 

His directness and accessibility made friends for 
him with these hard-headed business men as readily 
as it had made friends with soldiers and with the 
mass of people. Winnipeg had already exerted its 



182 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Western faculty for affectionate epithets. He had 
already been dubbed a " Fine Kiddo," and it was 
commonplace to hear people say of him, " He's a 
regular feller, he'll do." They said these things 
again in the Exchange, declaring emphatically he was 
" sure, a manly-looking chap." 

As he left the Exchange the members switched the 
chaos of the pit into shouts of a more hearty and 
powerful volume, and to listen to a crowd of such 
fully-seasoned lungs doing their utmost in the con- 
fined space of a building is an awe-inspiring and ter- 
rific experience. 

The friendliness here was but a " classified 
sample " — if the Winnipeg Exchange will permit 
that expression — of the friendliness in bulk he 
found all over Canada, and which he found in the 
great West, upon which he was now entering. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST 
SASKATOON AND EDMONTON 

I 

FROM Winnipeg, on the night of September 
ioth, we pushed steadily northwest, and on 
the morning of Thursday, the nth, we were 
in the open prairie, a new land that is being opened 
up by the settler. 

We were travelling too late to see the land under 
w heat — one of the finest sights in the world, we 
were told; but all the grain was not in, and we saw 
threshing operations in progress and big areas 
covered with the strangely small stooks, the result of 
the Canadian system of cutting the standing stalk 
rather high up. In the early night, by Portage la 
Prairie, we had seen big fires burning in the distance. 
They were not, as we at first thought, prairie fires, 
but the homesteader getting rid of the great mounds 
of stalk left by the threshing, the usual method. 

In the early morning mist we came upon the big, 
flat expanse of Horn Lake, near Wynyard, over 
which flew lines of militaristic duck in wedge forma- 
tion. The prairies lay about us in a great expanse, 
dun-brown and rolling. It is a monotonous land- 
scape, and there were few if any trees until we got 
farther north and west. 

183 



184 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

The little prairie towns appear on the horizon a 
great distance away, thanks to the big grain elevators 
alongside the track. The grain elevators in these 
plains are what churches are in Europe; they have, 
indeed, the look of being basilicas of a new, 
materialistic dispensation. 

The little towns under the elevators seem pal- 
pably to be struggling with the inert force of the 
prairie about them. Prairie seems to be flowing 
into them on every side, and only by a brave effort 
do houses and streets raise themselves above the en- 
croaching sea of grass. Yet all the towns have a 
modern air, too. All have excellent electric light 
services in houses and streets, and all have " movie " 
theatres. 

At the stations crowds were gathered. At Wyn- 
yard all the young of the district appeared to have 
collected before going to school. Catching the 
word that the Prince " lived " in the last car, they 
swarmed round it. Some one told them the Prince 
was still in bed, and with the utmost cheerfulness 
they began to chant : " Sleepy head ! Sleepy head ! " 

At Lanigan, the next station, a crowd of the same 
cheery temper also raised a clamour for the Prince. 
As a rule he never disappointed them, and would 
leave whatever he was doing to go on to the obser- 
vation platform at the first hint of cheers. But 
at Lanigan there were difficulties. The crowd 
cheered. Some one looked out of the car, made a 
gesture of negation, and went back. The crowd 
cheered a good deal more. There was a pause; 
more cheering. Then a discreet member of the 



The Fringe of the Great Northwest 185 

Staff came out and said the Prince was awfully sorry, 
but — but, well, he was in his bath ! 

" That's all the better," called a cheerful girl 
from the heart of the crowd. " We don't mind." 

The member of the Staff vanished in a new gust of 
cheering, probably to hide his blushes. Need I say 
the Prince did not appear? 

At Colonsay there was a stop of five minutes only, 
but the people of the town made the most of it. 
They had a pretty Britannia to the fore, and all the 
school-children grouped about her and singing when 
the train steamed in. And when it stopped, a de- 
lightful and tiny miss came forward and gave the 
Prince a bunch of sweet peas. 

These incidents were a few only of a characteristic 
day's run. Every day the same sort of thing hap- 
pened, so that though the Prince had a more strenu- 
ous time in the bigger cities, his " free times " were 
actually made up of series of smaller functions in the 
smaller ones. 

II 

Saskatoon, the distributing city for the middle of 
Saskatchewan, was to give the Prince a memorable 
day. It was here that he obtained his first insight 
into the life and excitements of the cowboy. Saska- 
toon, in addition to the usual reception functions, 
showed him a " Stampede," which is a cowboy 
sports meeting. 

The Prince arrived in the town at noon, and 
drove through the streets to the Park and University 
grounds for the reception ceremonies. It is a keen, 



186 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

bright place, seeming, indeed, of sparkling newness 
in the wonderful clarified sunlight of the prairie. 

It is new. Saskatoon is only now beginning its 
own history. It is still sorting itself out from the 
plain which its elevators, business blocks and de- 
lightful residential districts are yet occupied in 
thrusting back. It is a characteristic town on the 
uplift. It snubs and encroaches upon the illimitable 
fields with its fine American architecture, and its 
stone university buildings. It has new suburbs full 
of houses of symmetrical Western comeliness in a 
tract wearing the air of Buffalo Bill. 

It grows so fast that you can almost see it doing 
it. It has grown so fast that it has outstripped the 
guide-book makers. They talk of it in two lines as 
a village of a few hundred inhabitants, but put not 
your trust in guide-books when coming to Canada, 
for the village you come out to see turns out, like 
Saskatoon, to be a bustling city full of " pep," as 
they say, and possessing 20,000 inhabitants. 

The guide-book makers are not to blame. Some- 
where about 1903 there were no more than 150 
people within its boundaries. Now, from the look 
of it, it could provide ten motor-cars for each of 
these oldest inhabitants, and have about 500 over 
for new-comers — in fact, that is about the figure ; 
there are 2,000 cars on the Saskatoon registers. 
Saskatoon was full of cars neatly lined up along the 
Prince's route during every period of his stay. 

The great function of the visit was the " Stam- 
pede." This sports meeting took place on a big 
lacing ground before a grand-stand that held many 



The Fringe of the Great Northwest 187 

thousand more people than Saskatoon boasted. The 
many cars that brought them in from all over the 
country were parked in huge wedges in and about 
the ground. 

Passing off the wild dirt roads, the Prince headed 
a procession of cars round the course before en- 
tering a special pavilion erected facing the grand- 
stand. His coming was the signal for the Stam- 
pede to commence. It was a new thrill to Britishers, 
an affair of excitement, and a real breath of West- 
ern life. They told us that the cattle kings are mov- 
ing away from this area to the more spacious and 
lonely lands of the North; but the exhibition the 
Prince witnessed showed that the daring and skilful 
spirit of the cowboys has not moved on yet. 

We were also told that this Stampede was some- 
thing in the nature of a circus that toured the coun- 
try, and that men and animals played their parts 
mechanically as oft-tried turns in a show. But even 
if that was so, the thing was unique to British eyes, 
and the exhibition of all the tricks of the cattleman's 
calling was for those who looked on a new sensation. 

Cattlemen rode before the Prince on bucking 
horses that, loosed from wooden cages, came along 
the track like things compact of India-rubber and 
violence, as they strove to throw the leechlike men 
in furry, riding chaps, loose shirts, sweat-rags and 
high felt hats, who rode them. 

Some of the men rode what seemed a more difficult 
proposition — an angry bull, that bunched itself up 
and down and lowed vindictively, as it tried to buck 
its rider off. 



188 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

From the end of the race-track a steer was loosed, 
and a cowboy on a small lithe broncho rode after 
it at top speed. Round the head of this man the 
lariat whirled like a live snake. In a flash the noose 
was tight about the steer's horns, the brilliant little 
horse had overtaken the beast, and in an action when 
man and horse seemed to combine as one, the tight- 
ened rope was swung against the steer's legs. It was 
thrown heavily. Like lightning the cowboy was off 
the horse, was on top of the half-stunned steer, and 
had its legs hobbled in a rope. 

One man of the many who competed in this trial 
of skill performed the whole operation in twenty- 
eight seconds from the time the steer was loosed 
to the time its legs were secured. 

A more daring feat is " bull-dogging." 

The steer is loosed as before, and the cattleman 
rides after it, but instead of lassoing it, he leaps 
straight out of his saddle and plunges on to the horns 
of the beast. Gripping these long and cruel-looking 
weapons, he twists the bull's neck until the animal 
comes down, and there, with his body in the hollow 
of the neck and shoulder, he holds it until his com- 
panions run up and release him. 

There is a real thrill of danger in this. 

One man, a cowboy millionaire, caught his steer 
well, but in the crash in which the animal came down 
it rolled right over him. For a moment man and 
beast were lost in a confusion of tossing legs and 
dust. Then the man, with shirt torn to ribbons 
and his back scraped in an ugly manner, rose up 
gamely and limped away. The only thing about 



The Fringe of the Great Northwest 189 

him that had escaped universal dusting was his white 
double-linen collar, the strangest article of clothing 
any " bull-dogger " might wear. 

The Prince called this plucky fellow, as well as 
others of the outfit, into the pavilion, and talked 
with them some time on the risk and adventures of 
their business, as well as congratulating them on 
their skill. 

Two comely cowgirls, in fringed leather dresses, 
high boots, bright blouses and broad sombreros, also 
caught his eye. He spoke to a " movie " man, who 
had already added to the gaiety of nations by leap- 
ing round in a circle (heavy camera and all) while 
a big, bucking broncho had leaped round after him, 
telling him that the girls formed a fit subject for the 
lens. 

" I'm waiting until I can get you with them, sir," 
said the " movie " man. 

" Oh, you'll get me all right," the Prince laughed. 
" There's no chance of my escaping you." 

The " movie " man got Prince and cowgirls pres- 
ently, when the Prince had invited them into the 
pavilion to chat for a few minutes. They were fine, 
free and independent girls, who enjoyed the natural- 
ness and easiness of the interview. 

During the meeting all the arts of the cowboys 
were exhibited. The lariat expert lassoed men and 
horses in bunches of five as easily as he lassoed one, 
and danced in and turned somersaults through his 
ever-whirling loop. There were some fine exhibi- 
tions of horse-riding, and there was some Amazonian 
racing by girls in jockey garb. 



190 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

The human interlude was also there. A daring 
woman photographer in the grand-stand held up a 
cowboy. Disregarding her long skirts, she climbed 
the fence of the course and calmly mounted behind 
the horseman. Riding thus, she passed across the 
front of the cheering grand-stand and came to the 
steps of the Prince's pavilion. Unconcerned by the 
joy of the great crowd, she asked permission to take 
a snapshot, and received it, going her way unruffled 
and entirely Canadian. 

The very thrilling afternoon was closed by the 
Prince himself. Walking over to the crowd of 
cattlemen, he stood talking with them and examining 
their horses. Presently, on the invitation of the 
leader, he mounted a broncho, and, leading the 
bunch of cowboys and cowgirls, swept down the track 
and past the stand. The people, delighted at this 
unexpected act, vented themselves in the usual way 
— that is, with extraordinary enthusiasm. 



Ill 



Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, was the Prince's 
farthest north. He arrived there on Friday, Sep- 
tember 1 2th, to receive the unstinted welcome which, 
long since, we had come to know was Canada's na- 
tural attitude towards him. As we crossed the 
broad main street to the station, the sight of the vast 
human flower-bed that filled the road below the 
railway bridge made one tingle at the thoroughness 
with which these towns gathered to express them- 
selves. 



The Fringe of the Great Northwest 191 

Canada, as I may have hinted already, has a way 
of leading strangers astray concerning herself. In 
Eastern Canada we were told that we would find the 
West " different." From what was said to us, there 
was some reason for expecting to find an entirely 
new race on the Pacific side of Winnipeg. It would 
be a race further removed from the British tradi- 
tion, a race not so easy to get on with, a race not 
moved by the impulses and enthusiasms that stirred 
the East. 

And in the West? Well, all I can say is that quite 
a number of Western men shook me by the hand and 
told me how thankful I must be now that I had left 
the cold and rigid East for the more generous 
warmth of the spacious West. And hadn't I found 
the East a strange place, inhabited by people not 
easy to get on with, and removed from the British 
tradition — and so on . . . ? 

This singular state of things may seem queer to 
the Briton, but I think it is easily explainable. In 
the first place, Canada is so vast that her people, 
even though they be on the same continent, are as 
removed from immediate intimacy as the Kentish 
man is from the man in a Russian province. And 
not only does great distance make for lack of knowl- 
edge, but the fact that each province is self-con- 
tained and feeds upon itself, so to speak, in the mat- 
ter of news and so on, makes the citizen in Ontario, 
or Quebec, or New Brunswick, regard the people 
of the West as living in a distant and strange land. 

The Canadian, too, is intensely loyal to Canada; 
that means he is intensely jealous for her reputation. 



192 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

He warned us against all possibilities, I think, so that 
we should be ready for any disappointment. 

There was not the slightest need for warning. 
Whether East or West, Canada was solid in its 
welcome, and, as far as I am able to judge, there is 
no difference at all in the texture of human habit and 
mind East or West. There is the same fine, sturdy 
quality of loyalty and hospitality over the whole 
Dominion. Canada is Canada all through. 

Edmonton is a fine, lusty place. It is the prairie 
town in its teens. It has not yet put off its coltish 
air. It is Winnipeg just leaving school, and has 
the wonderful precocity of these eager towns of the 
West. It is running almost before it has learnt 
to walk. 

While full-blooded Indians still move in its 
streets, it is putting up buildings worthy of a Euro- 
pean metropolis. It has opened big up-to-date 
stores and public offices by the side of streets that 
are yet the mere stamped earth of the untutored 
plain. 

Along its main boulevard, Jasper Avenue, slip the 
astonishing excess of automobiles one has learnt to 
expect in Canadian towns. A brisk electric tram 
service weaves the mass of street movement to- 
gether, and at night over all shines an exuberance 
of electric light. 

That main street is tingling with modernity. Its 
stores, its music-halls, its " movie " theatres, and its 
hotels glitter with the nervous intensity of a spirit 
avid of the latest ideas. 

Fringing the canyon of the brown North Sas- 



The Fringe of the Great Northwest 193 

katchewan River is a beautiful automobile road, 
winding among pretty residential plots and comely 
enough for any town. 

Yet swing out in a motor for a few miles, and 
one is in a land where the roads — if any — are but 
the merest trails, where the silent and brooding 
prairie (hereabouts blessed with trees) stretches 
emptily for miles by the thousand. 

Turn the car north, and it heads for " The Great 
Lone Land," that expands about the reticent 
stretches of the Great Slave country, or follows the 
Peace River and the Athabasca beyond the cold line 
of the Arctic Circle. 

To get to these rich and isolated lands — and one 
thinks this out in the lounge of an hotel worthy of 
the Strand — the traveller must take devious and 
disconnected ways. Railways tap great tracts of 
the country, going up to Fort McMurray and the 
Peace River, and these connect up with river and 
lake steamers that ply at intervals. But travel here 
is yet mainly in the speculative stage, and long waits 
and guides and canoes and a camping outfit are 
necessary. 

In winter, if the traveller is adventurous and 
tough, he can progress more swiftly. He can go 
up by automobile and run along the courses of the 
rivers on the thick ice, and, on the ice, cross the big 
lakes. 

Though the land is within the Arctic Circle, it is 
rich. I talked with a traveller who had just re- 
turned from this area, and he spoke of the superb 
tall crops of grain he had seen on his journey. It 



194 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

will be magnificent land when it is opened up, and can 
accommodate the population of a kingdom. The 
growing season, of course, is shorter, but this is 
somewhat balanced by the longer northern days and 
the intense sunlight that is proper to them. The 
drawbacks are the very long winters, loneliness and 
the difficulties of transport. 

Edmonton, sitting across the gorge of the Sas- 
katchewan, feeds these districts and reflects them. 
Because of this it is a city of anachronisms. High 
up on the cliff, its site chosen with the usual apposit- 
ness of Canada, is the Capitol building, a bright and 
soaring structure done in the latest manner. Right 
under that decisively modern pile is a group of rough 
wooden houses. They are the original stores of the 
Hudson Bay Company, standing exactly as they 
did when they formed an outpost point of civilization 
in the Northwest. 

It is obviously a town in a young land, pushing 
ahead, as the Prince indicated in his speech to the 
Provincial Government, with all the intensity and 
zest of youth, having all the sense of freedom and 
possibility that the rich and great farming, fur- 
bearing and timber-growing tracts give it. 



IV 

The keen spirit of the city was reflected in the wel- 
come it gave the Prince. It was a wet, grey day, 
but the whole town was out to line the streets and to 
gather at the ceremonial points. And it was a 
musical greeting. Edmonton is prone to melody. 



The Fringe of the Great Northwest 195 

Brass bands appear to flourish here. There was* 
one at every street corner. And not only did they 
play as the Prince in the midst of his red-tuniced 
" Mountie " escort passed by, but they played all 
day, so that the city was given over to a non-stop 
carnival of popular airs. 

At the Parliament Buildings the crowds were as 
dense as ever. They showed the same spirit in listen- 
ing to addresses and reply, and the same hustling 
sense of " getting there " when entering the building 
to take part in the public reception. The addresses 
of welcome were a novelty. Engrossed on vellum, 
it had been sewn on the purple silk lining of a yel- 
low-furred coyote skin, a local touch that interested 
the Prince. There was another such touch after the 
reception. A body of Stony Indians were presented 
to His Royal Highness. These Indians had trav- 
elled from a distance in the hope of seeing the son of 
the Great White Chief, and they not only saw him 
but were presented to him. He talked with particu- 
lar sympathy to one chief whose son had been a 
comrade-in-arms in the Canadian ranks during the 
war and who had been killed in the fighting. 

The opening of a war memorial hall, a big and 
dazzling dance at the Government House, and other 
functions, fulfilled the usual round. And, last but 
not least, the Prince became a player and a " fan " 
in a ball game. 

There was a match (I hope "match" is right) 
between the local team, and one of its passionate 
rivals, and the Prince went to the ground to take 
part. Walking to the "diamond" (I'm sure that 



196 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

is right), he equipped himself in authentic manner, 
with floppy, jockey-peaked cap and a ruthless glance, 
took his stance as a " pitcher " and delivered two 
balls. I don't know whether they were stingers or 
swizzers, or whatever the syncopated phraseology 
of the great game dubs them, but they were mat- 
ters of great admiration. 

Having led to the undoing (I hope, for that was 
his task) of some one, the Prince then joined the 
audience. He chose not the best seats, but the 
popular ones, for he sat on the grass among the 
" bleachers," and when one has sat out of the shade 
in the hot prairie sun one knows what " bleachers " 
means. 

This sporting little interlude was immensely popu- 
lar, and the Prince left Edmonton with the reputa- 
tion of being a true " fan " and " a real good feller. 1 ' 



CHAPTER XV 

CALGARY AND THE CATTLE RANCH 

I 

THE Royal train arrived in Calgary, Alberta, 
on the morning of Sunday, September 14th, 
after some of the members of the train had 
spent an hour or so shooting gophers, a small field 
rat, part squirrel, and at all times a great pest in 
grain country. 

Calgary was a town that charmed at once. It 
stands in brilliant sunlight — and that sunlight 
seems to have an eternal quality — in a nest of en- 
folding hills. Two rivers with the humorous names 
of Bow and Elbow run through it; they are blue with 
the astonishing blueness of glacial silt. 

From the hills, or from the tops of such tall build- 
ings as the beautiful Palliser Hotel, the high and 
austere dividing line of the Rockies can be seen across 
the rolling country. Snow-cowled, and almost im- 
palpable above the ground mist, the great range of 
mountains looks like the curtain wall of a strong- 
hold of mystics. 

In the streets the city itself has an air of radiance. 
There is an invigoration in the atmosphere that 
seems to give all things a peculiar quality of zest. 
The sidewalks have a bustling and crisp virility, the 
public buildings are handsome, and the streets of 
homes particularly gracious. 

197 



198 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

The Sunday reception of the Prince was eloquent 
but quiet. There were the usual big crowds, but the 
day was deliberately without ceremonial. Divine 
Service at the Pro-Cathedral, where the Prince un- 
veiled a handsome rood-screen to the memory of 
those fallen in the war, was the only item in a restful 
day, which was spent almost entirely in the country 
at the County Club. 

But perhaps the visit to the County Club was not 
altogether quiet. 

The drive out to this charming place in a pit of a 
valley, where one of the rivers winds through the 
rolling hills, began in the comely residential streets. 

These residential districts of Canada and America 
certainly impress one. The well-proportioned and 
pretty houses, with their deep verandahs, the trees 
that group about them, the sparkling grass that 
comes down to the edge of the curb — all give one 
the sense of being the work of craftsmen who are 
masters in design. That sense seems to me to be 
evident, not only in domestic architecture, but in 
the design of public buildings. The feeling I had 
was that the people on this Continent certainly know 
how to build. And by building, I do not mean 
merely erecting a house of distinction, but also choos- 
ing sites of distinction. 

Nearly all the newer public buildings are of excel- 
lent design, and all are placed in excellent positions. 
Some of these sites are actually brilliant; the Parlia- 
ment Houses at Ottawa, as seen from the river, are 
intensely apposite, so are those at Edmonton and 
Regina, while the sites of such buildings as the Banff 



Calgary and the Cattle Ranch 199 

Springs Hotel, and, in a lesser sense, the Chateau at 
Lake Louise, seem to me to have been chosen with 
real genius. 

In saying that the people on this Continent cer- 
tainly know how to build, I am speaking of both 
the United States and Canada. This fine sense of 
architecture is even more apparent in the United 
States (I, of course, only speak of the few towns I 
visited) than in Canada, for there are more buildings 
and it is a richer country. The sense of architecture 
may spring from that country, or it may be that the 
whole Continent has the instinct. As I am not com- 
petent to judge, I accuse the whole of the Western 
hemisphere of that virtue. 

The Prince passed through these pretty districts 
where are the beautiful houses of ranchers and 
packing kings, farmers and pig rearers whose energy 
and vision have made Calgary rich as well as good 
to look upon. Passing from this region of good 
houses and good roads, he came upon a highway that 
is prairie even less than unalloyed, for constant traf- 
fic has scored it with a myriad ruts and bumps. 

Half-way up a hill, where a bridge of wood jumps 
across the stream that winds amid the pleasant gar- 
dens of the houses, the Prince's car was held up. A 
mob of militants rushed down upon it, and neither 
chauffeur, nor Chief of Staff, nor suite could resist. 

It was an attack not by Bolshevists, but by Boy 
Scouts. They flung themselves across the road in a 
mass, and would take no nonsense from any one. 
They insisted that the engine should take a holiday, 
and that they should hitch themselves to the car. 



200 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

They won their point and hitched. The car, under 
some hundred boy-power, went up the long hill — 
and a gruelling hill it is — through the club gates, 
and down a longer hill, to where, in a deep cup, the 
house stands. 

At the club the visit was entirely formal. The 
Prince became an ordinary member and chatted to 
other men and women members in a thoroughly club- 
like manner. 

" He is so easy to get on with," said one lady. 
" I found it was I who was the more reserved for 
the first few minutes, and it was I who had to be- 
come more human. 

" He is a young man who has something to say, 
and who has ears to listen to things worth while. 
He has no use for preliminaries or any other non- 
sense that wastes time in ' getting together.' " 

He lunched at the club and drifted about among 
the people gathered on the lawns before going for a 
hard walk over the hills. 



II 

The real day of functions was on Monday, when 
the Prince drove through the streets, visiting many 
places, and, later, speaking impressively at a citizens' 
lunch in the Palliser Hotel. 

His passage through the streets was cheered by 
big crowds, but crowds of a definite Western quality. 
Here the crowns of hats climbed high, sometimes 
reaching monstrous peaks that rise as samples of the 
Rockies from curly brims as monstrous. Under 



Calgary and the Cattle Ranch 201 

these still white felt altitudes are the vague eyes and 
lean, contemplative faces of the cattlemen from the 
stock country around. Here and there were other 
prairie types who linger while the tide of modernity 
rushes past them. They are the Indians, brown, 
lined and forward stooping, whose reticent eyes look- 
ing out from between their braided hair seem to be 
dwelling on their long yesterday. 

At the citizens' lunch the Prince departed from his 
usual trend of speech-making to voice some of the 
impressions that this new land had brought to him. 
He once more spoke of the sense of spaciousness and 
possibility the vast prairies of the West had given 
him, but today he went further and dwelt upon the 
need of making those possibilities assured. The 
foundation that had made the future as well as the 
present possible, was the work of the great pioneers 
and railway men who had mastered the country in 
their stupendous labours, and made it fit for a great 
race to grow in. 

The foundation built in so much travail was ready. 
Upon it Canada must build, and it must build right. 

" The farther I travel through Canada," he said, 
11 the more I am struck by the great diversities which 
it presents; its many and varied communities are not 
only separated by great distances, but also by diver- 
gent interests. You have much splendid alien hu- 
man material to assimilate, and so much has already 
been done towards cementing all parts of the Domin- 
ion that I am sure you will ultimately succeed in 
accomplishing this great task, but it will need the co- 
operation of all parties, of all classes and all races, 



202 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

working together for the common cause of Canadian 
nationhood under the British flag. 

" Serious difficulties and controversies must often 
arise, but I know nothing can set Canada back ex- 
cept the failure of the different classes and com- 
munities to look to the wider interests of the Domin- 
ion, as well as their own immediate needs. I real- 
ize that scattered communities, necessarily preoccu- 
pied with the absorbing task of making good, often 
find the wider view difficult to keep. Yet I feel 
sure that it will be kept steadily before the eyes of all 
the people of this great Western country, whose very 
success in making the country what it is proves their 
staying power and capacity." 

Canada, he declared, had already won for herself 
a legitimate place in the fraternity of nations, and 
the character and resources within her Dominion 
must eventually place her influence equal to, if not 
greater than, the influence of any other part of the 
Empire. Much depended upon Canada's use of her 
power, and the greatness of her future was wrapped 
up in her using it wisely and well. 

The great gathering was impressed by the states- 
man-like quality of the speech, the first of its kind 
he had made since his landing. He spoke with 
ease, making very little use of his notes and show- 
ing a greater freedom from nervousness. The 
sincerity of his manner carried conviction, and there 
was a great demonstration when he sat down. 



Calgary and the Cattle Ranch 203 

in 

In the afternoon he left Calgary by train for the 
small " cow town " of High River, from there going 
on by car over roads that were at times cart ruts in 
the fields, to the Bar U Ranch, where he was to be 
the guest of Mr. George Lane. 

His host, " George Lane," as he is called every- 
where, is known as far as the States and England 
as one of the cattle kings. He is a Westerner of the 
Westerners, and an individuality even among them. 
Tall and loose-built, with an authentic Bret Harte 
quality in action and speech, he can flash a glance 
of shrewdness or humour from the deep eyes under 
their shaggy, pent-house brows. He is one of the 
biggest ranch owners in the West (perhaps the big- 
gest) ; his judgment on cattle or 'horses is law, and 
he has no frills. 

His attractive ranch on the plains, where the rol- 
ling lands meet the foot-hills of the Rockies, has an 
air of splendid spaciousness. We did not go to 
Bar U, but a friend took us out on a switchback 
automobile run over what our driver called a 
" hellofer " road, to just such another ranch near 
Cockrane, and we could judge what these estates 
were like. 

They are lonely but magnificent. They extend 
with lakes, close, tight patches of bush and small 
and occasional woods over undulating country to 
the sharp, bare wall of the snow-capped Rockies. 
The light is marvellous. Calgary is 3,500 feet up, 
and the level mounts steadily to the mountains. At 



204 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

this altitude the sunlight has an astonishing clarity, 
and everything is seen in a sharp and brilliant 
light. 

In the rambling but comfortable house of the 
ranch the Prince was entertained with cattleman's 
fare, and on the Tuesday (after a ten-mile run be- 
fore breakfast) he was introduced to the ardours 
of the cattleman's calling. He mounted a broncho 
and with his host joined the cowboys in rounding 
several thousand head of cattle, driving them in 
towards the branding corrals. 

This is no task for an idler or a slacker. The 
bunch was made up mainly of cows with calves, or 
steers of less than a year old, who believed in the 
policy of self-determination, being still unbranded 
and still conspicuously independent. Most of them, 
in fact, had seen little or nothing of man in their 
life of lonely pasturage over the wide plains. 

Riding continually at a gallop and in a whirlwind 
of movement and dust and horns, the Prince helped 
to bunch the mass into a compact circle, and then 
joined with the others in riding into the nervous 
herd, in order to separate the calves from the 
mothers, and the unbranded steers from those al- 
ready marked with the sign of Bar U. 

Calves and steers were roped and dragged to the 
corral, where they were flung and the brand seared 
on their flanks with long irons taken from a fire 
in the enclosure. 

The Prince did not spare himself, and worked as 
hard as any cattleman in the business, and indeed he 
satisfied those exacting critics, the cowboys, who 



Calgary and the Cattle Ranch 205 

produced in his favour another Westernism, de- 
scribing him as " a Bear. He's fur all over." 
Then, as though a strenuous morning in the saddle 
was not enough, he went off in the afternoon after 
partridges, spending the whole time on the tramp 
until he was due to start for Calgary. 

His pleasure in his experience was summed up in 
the terse comment: "Some Ranch," that he set 
against his signature in Mr. Lane's visitors' book. 
It also had the practical result of turning him into 
a rancher himself, for it was at this time he saw the 
ranch which he ultimately bought. It is a very good 
little property, close to Mr. Lane's, so that in run- 
ning it the Prince will have the advantage of that 
expert's advice. Part of the Prince's plan for hand- 
ling it is to give an opportunity to soldiers who served 
with him in the war to take up positions on the 
ranch. Mr. Lane told me himself that the proposi- 
tion is a practical one, and there should be profitable 
results. 

Leaving Bar U, the Prince returned to High 
River at that Canadian pace of travelling which 
sets the timid European wondering whether his ac- 
cident policy is fully paid up. In High River, 
where the old cow-puncher ideal of hitting up the 
dust in the wild and woolly manner has given way 
to the rule of jazz dances and bright frocks, he 
mounted the train and steamed off to Calgary. 

In Calgary great things had been done to the 
Armoury where the ball was to be held. Handled 
in the big manner of the Dominion, the great hall 
had been re-floored with " hard wood " blocks, and 



206 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

a scheme of real beauty, extending to an artificial 
sky in the roof, had been evolved. 

At this dance the whole of Calgary seemed in at- 
tendance, either on- the floor, or outside watching the 
guests arrive. In Canada the scope of the invita- 
tions is universal. There are no distinctions. The 
pretty girl who serves you with shaving soap over 
the drug store counter asks if she will meet you at the 
Prince's ball, as a matter of course. She is going. 
So is the young man at the estate office. So is your 
taxi chauffeur (the taxi is an open touring car). So 
is — everybody. These dances are the most demo- 
cratic affairs, and the most spirited. And as spirited 
and democratic as anybody was the Prince himself, 
who, in this case, in spite of his run before breakfast, 
a hard morning in the saddle, his long tramp in the 
afternoon, his automobile and railway travelling, 
danced with the rest into the small hours of the morn- 
ing. 

All the little boys in Calgary watched for his 
arrival. And after he had gone in there was a 
fierce argument as to who had come in closest contact 
with him. One little boy said that the Prince had 
looked straight at him and smiled. 

Another capped it: 

11 He shoved me on the shoulder as he went by," 
he cried. 

The inevitable last chimed in: 

" You don't make it at all," he said. " He trod 
on my brother's toe." 



CHAPTER XVI 

CHIEF MORNING STAR COMES TO BANFF AND 
THE ROCKIES 



IN the night the Royal train steamed the few 
miles from Calgary and on the morning of 
Wednesday, September 17th, we woke up in 
the first field works of the Rocky Mountains. 

It was a day on which we were to see one of the 
most picturesque ceremonies of the tour, and slip- 
ping through the high scarps of the mountains to the 
little valley in which Banff station stands, we were 
into that experience of colour at once. 

Drawn up in the open by the little station was a 
line of Indians, clad in their historic costumes, and 
mounted on the small, springy horses of Canada. 
Some were in feathers and buckskin and beads, some 
in the high felt hats and bright shirts of the cowboy, 
all were romantic in- bearing. They were there to 
form the escort of the new " Chief." 

As the Prince's car drove from the station along 
a road that wound its way amid glades of spruce and 
poplar glowing with the. old gold of Autumn that 
filled the valleys winding about the feet of high and 
austere mountains, other bodies of Stoney Indians 
joined the escort about the car. 

They had gathered at the opening of every side 

207 



2c8 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

lane, and as the cavalcade passed, dropped in behind, 
until the procession became a snake of shifting col- 
our, vermilion and cherry, yellow and blue and green, 
going forward under the dappling of sun that slipped 
between the swinging branches. 

Chiefs, the sunray of eagles' feathers on their 
heads, braves in full war-paint, Indian cowboys in 
shirts of all the colours of the spectrum, and squaws 
a mass of beads and sequins, with bright shawls and 
brighter silk head-wraps, made up the escort. Be- 
hind and at times in front of many of the squaws 
were papooses, some riding astraddle, their arms 
round the women's waists, others slung in shawls, 
but all clad in Indian garb that seemed to be made 
up of a mass of closely-sewn beads, turquoise, green, 
white or red, so that the little bodies were like scaly 
and glittering lizards. 

This ride that wound in and out of these very 
beautiful mountain valleys took the Prince past the 
enclosures of the National Park, and he saw under 
the trees the big, hairy-necked bison, the elk and 
mountain goats that are harboured in this great 
natural reserve. 

On the racecourse were Indian tepees, banded, 
painted with the heads of bulls, and bright with flags. 
The braves who were waiting for the Prince, and 
those who were escorting him, danced, their ponies 
whirling about, racing through veils of dust and 
fluttering feathers and kerchiefs in a sort of ride of 
welcome. From over by the tepees there came the 
low throbbing of tom-toms to join with the thin, 
high, dog-like whoop of the Indian greeting. 



Chief Morning Star 209 

On a platform at the hub of half-circle of Indians 
the Prince listened to the addresses and accepted the 
Chieftaincy of the Stoney tribe. Some of the In- 
dians had their faces painted a livid chrome-yellow, 
so that their heads looked like masks of death; some 
were smeared with red, some barred with blue. 
Most, however, showed merely the high-boned, 
sphinx-like brown of their faces free from war-paint. 
The costumes of many were extremely beautiful, the 
wonderful beadwork on tunic and moccasins being a 
thing of amazing craftsmanship, though the elk-tooth 
decorations, though of great value, were not so at- 
tractive. 

Standing in front of the rest, the chief, " Little 
Thunder," read the address to the Prince. He was 
a big, aquiline fellow, young and handsome, clad in 
white, hairy chaps and cowboy shirt. He spoke in 
sing-song Cree, his body curving back from straddled 
knees as though he sat a pulling horse. 

In his historic tongue, and then in English, he 
spoke of the honour the Prince was paying the 
Stoneys, and of their enduring loyalty to him and his 
father; and he asked the Prince " to accept from us 
this Indian suit, the best we have, emblematic of the 
clothes we wore in happy days. We beg you also to 
allow us to elect you as our chief, and to give you the 
name Chief Morning Star." 

The suit given to the Prince was an exceedingly 
handsome one of white buckskin, decorated with 
beads, feathers and fur, and surmounted by a great 
headdress of feathers rising from a fillet of beads 
and fur. The Prince put on the headdress at once, 



210 Westward with the Prmce of Wales 

and spoke to the Indians as a chief to his braves, tell- 
ing them of the honour they had done him. 

When he had finished, the tom-toms were brought 
into action again, and a high, thin wail went up from 
the ring of Indians, and they began almost at once 
to move round in a dance. Indian dancing is mo- 
notonous. It is done to the high, nasal chanting of 
men gathered round a big drum in the centre of the 
ring. This drum is beaten stoically by all to give 
the time. 

Some of the dancing is the mere bending of knees 
and a soft shuffling stamping of moccasined feet. In 
other dances vividly clad, broad-faced, comely squaws 
joined in the ring of braves, whose feathers and elk- 
tooth ornaments swung as they moved, and the whole 
ring, with a slightly rocking movement, shuffled an 
inch at a time round the tom-tom men. The motion 
was very like that of soldiers dressing ranks. 

A more spirited dance is done by braves holding 
weapons stiffly, and following each other in file round 
the circle, now bending knees, or bodies, now stand- 
ing upright. As they pass round and dip they loose 
little snapping yelps. All the time their faces remain 
as impassive as things graven. 

The dancing was followed by racing. Boys 
mounted bareback the springy little horses, and with 
their legs twisted into rope-girths — with reins, the 
only harness — went round the track at express 
speed. Young women, riding astride, their dresses 
tied about their knees, also raced, showing horse- 
manship even superior to the boys. The riding was 
extremely fine, and the little horses bunch and move 



Chief Morning Star 211 

with an elastic and hurtling movement that is thrill- 
ing. 

The ceremony had made the bravest of spectacles. 
The Indian colour and romance of the scene, set in a 
deep cup rimmed by steep, grim mountains, the sides 
and icecaps of which the bright sunlight threw up 
into an almost unreal actuality, gave it a rare and 
entrancing quality. And not the least of its pictur- 
esque attractions were the papooses in bead and 
fringed leather, who grubbed about in the earth with 
stoic calm. They looked almost too toylike to be 
true. They looked as though their right place was 
in a scheme of decoration on a wall or a mantel-shelf. 
As one lady said of them: " They're just the sort 
of things I want to take home as souvenirs." 



II 

Banff is an exquisite and ideal holiday place, and I 
can appreciate the impulse that sends many Amer- 
icans as well as Canadians to enjoy its beauties in the 
summer. 

It is a valley ringed by an amphitheatre of moun- 
tains, up the harsh slopes of which spruce forests 
climb desperately until beaten by the height and rock 
on the scarps beneath crests which are often snow- 
capped. Through this broad valley, and winding 
round slopes into other valleys, run streams of that 
poignant blueness which only glacial silt and superb 
mountain skies can impart. 

The houses and hotels in this Switzerland of Can- 
ada are charming, but the Banff Springs Hotel, 



212 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

where the Prince stayed, is genius. It is perched up 
on a spur in the valley, so that in that immense ring 
of heights it seems to float insubstantially above the 
clouds of trees, like the palace of some genii. For 
not only was its site admirably chosen, but the whole 
scheme of the building fits the atmosphere of the 
place. And it is as comfortable as it is beautiful. 

It faces across its red-tiled, white-balustered ter- 
races and vivid lawns, a sharp river valley that strolls 
winding amid the mountains. And just as this river 
turns before it, it tumbles down a rock slide in a vast 
mass of foam, so that even when one cannot see its 
beauty at night, its roar can be heard in the wonder- 
ful silence of the valley. On the terrace of the hotel 
are two bathing-pools fed from the sulphur springs 
of Banff, and here Canadians seem to bathe all day 
until dance-time — and even slip back for a moon- 
light bath between dancing and bed. 

It is an ideal place for a holiday, for there is golf- 
ing, climbing, walking and bathing for those whose 
athletic instincts are not satisfied with beauty, and 
automobile rides amid beauty. And it is, of course, 
a perfect place for honeymooners, as one will find 
by consulting the Visitors' Book, for with character- 
istic frankness the Canadians and Americans sign 
themselves : 

" Mr. and Mrs. Jack P. Eeks, Spokane. We 
are on our honeymoon." 

The Prince spent an afternoon and a morning 
playing golf amid the immensities of Banff, or travel- 



Chief Morning Star 213 

ling in a swift car along its beautiful roads. There 
are most things in Banff to make man happy, even 
a coal mine, sitting like a black and incongruous 
gnome in the heart of enchanted hills, to provide 
heat against mountain chills. 

The Prince saw the sulphur spring that bubbles 
out of quicksand in a little cavern deep in the hill- 
side — a cavern made almost impregnable by smell. 
In the old days the determined bather had to shin 
down a pole through a funnel, and take his curative 
bath in the rocky oubliette of the spring. Now the 
Government has arranged things better. It has 
carved a dark tunnel to the pool, and carried the 
water to two big swimming tanks on the open hillside, 
where one can take a plunge with all modern acces- 
sories. 

ill 

From Banff in the afternoon of Thursday, Sep- 
tember 1 8th, the train carried the Prince through 
scenery that seemed to accumulate beauty as he 
travelled to another eyrie of loveliness, Lake Louise. 

At Lake* Louise Station the railway is five thou- 
sand feet above the sea-level, but the Chateau and 
Lake are yet higher, and the Prince climbed to them 
by a motor railway that rises clinging to the moun- 
tain-side, until it twists into woods and mounts up- 
ward by the side of a blue-and-white stream dashing 
downward, with an occasional breather in a deep 
pool, over rocks. 

The Chateau is poised high up in the world on the 
lip of a small and perfect lake of poignant blue, that 



214 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

fills the cup made by the meeting of a ring of massive 
heights. At the end of the lake, miles away, but, 
thanks to the queerness of mountain perspective, 
looking close enough to touch, rises the scarp of 
Mount Victoria, capped with a vast glacier that 
seemed to shine with curious inner lambency under 
the clear light of the grey day. There is a touch 
of the theatre in that view from the windows or the 
broad lawns of the Chateau, for the mountain and 
glacier is a huge back-drop seen behind wings made 
by the shoulders of other mountains, and all, rock 
and spruce woods, as well as the clear shining of the 
ice, are mirrored in the perfect lake that makes the 
floor of the valley. 

Up on one of the shoulders of the lake, hidden 
away in a screen of trees, is the home of an English 
woman. She used to spend her days working in a 
shop in the West End of London until happy chance 
brought her to Lake Louise, and she opened a tea 
chalet high on that lonely crag. She has changed 
from the frowsty airs of her old life to a place where 
she can enjoy beauty, health and an income that al- 
lows her to fly off to California when the winter 
comes. The Prince went up to take tea in this chalet 
of romance and profit during his walk of exercise. 

There is another kind of romance in the woods 
about the Chateau, and one of the policemen who 
guarded the Prince made its acquaintance during the 
night. In the dark he heard the noise of some one 
moving amid the trees that come down to the edge 
of the hotel grounds. He thought that some un- 
pleasant intruder on the Prince's privacy was at- 



Chief Morning Star 215 

tempting to sneak in by the back way. He marched 
up to the edge of the wood and waited in his most 
legal attitude for the intruder — and a bear came 
out to meet him. Not only did it come out to meet 
him, but it reared up and waved its paws in a 
thoroughly militant manner. The policeman was a 
ma»n from the industrial East, and not having been 
trained to the habits of bears, decided on a strategic 
withdrawal. 

His experience was one of the next day's jokes, 
since it appears that bears often do come out of the 
woods attracted by the smell of hotel cooking. On 
the whole they are amiable, and are no more difficult 
than ordinary human beings marching in the direc- 
tion of a good dinner. 

From Lake Louise the Prince went steadily west 
through some of the most impressive scenery in 
Canada. The gradient climbs resolutely to the 
great lift of petrified earth above Kicking Horse 
Pass, so that the train seemed to be steaming across 
the sky. 

A little east of the Pass is a slight monument 
called " the Great Divide." Here Alberta meets 
British Columbia, and here a stream springs from 
the mountains to divide itself east and west, one fork 
joining stream after stream, until as a great river it 
empties into Hudson Bay; the other, turning west 
and leaping down the ledges of valleys, makes for 
the Pacific. 

Beyond u the Great Divide " the titanic Kicking 
Horse Pass opens out. It falls by gigantic levels 
for 1,300 feet to the dim, spruce-misted valleys that 



216 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

lie darkly at the foot of the giant mountains. It is 
not a straight canyon, but a series of deeper valleys 
opening out of deep valleys round the shoulders of 
the grim slopes. Down this tortuous corridor the 
railway creeps lower, level by level, going with the 
physical caution of a man descending a dangerous 
slope. 

The line feels for its best footholds on the sides 
of walls that drop sheer away, and tower sheer above. 
We could look over the side down abrupt precipices, 
and see through the dense rain of the day the mighty 
drop to where the Kicking Horse River, after leap- 
ing over rocky ramps and flowing through level pools, 
ran in a score of channels on the wide shingly floor 
of the Pass. 

Beneath us as we descended we could see the track 
twisting and looping, as it sought by tunnelling to 
conquer the exacting gradient. The planning of the 
line is, in its own way, as wonderful as the natural 
marvel of the Pass. One is filled with awe at the 
vision, the genius and the tenacity of those great rail- 
way men who had seen a way over this grim moun- 
tain barrier, had schemed their line and had mastered 
nature. 

At Yoho Station that clings like a limpet near the 
top of this soaring barrier, the Prince took to horse, 
and rode down trails that wind along the mountain- 
side through thickets of trees to Field at the foot of 
the drop. The rain was driving up the throat of the 
valley before a strong wind, and it was not a good 
day for riding, even in woolly chaps such as he wore, 
but he set out at a gallop, and enjoyed the exercise 



Chief Morning Star 217 

and the scenery, which is barbaric and tremendous, 
though here and there it was etherealized by sudden 
gleams of sunlight playing on the wet foliage of the 
mountain-side and turning the wet masses into rain- 
bows. 

During this ride he passed under the stain in a 
sheer wall of rock that gives the Pass its name. For 
some geological reason there is, high up in a straight 
mass of white towering cliff, a black outcrop that is 
like the silhouette of an Indian on a horse. I could 
not distinguish the kick in the horse myself, but I 
was assured it was there, and Kicking Horse is thus 
named. 

From Field, a breathing space for trains, about 
which has grown a small village possessing one good 
hotel, the Prince rode up the valleys to some of the 
beauty spots, such as Emerald Lake, which lies high 
in the sky under the cold glaciers of Mount Burgess. 
It was a wonderful ride through the spruce and 
balsam woods of these high valleys. 



IV 

During Saturday, September 20th, the train was 
yet in the mountains, and the scenery continued to be 
magnificent. From Field the line works down to 
the level of the Columbia River, some 1,500 feet 
lower, through magnificent stretches of mountain 
panorama, and through breathless gorges like the 
Palliser, before climbing again steeply to the highest 
point of the Selkirk Range. Here the train seemed 
to charge straight at the towering wall of Mount 



218 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

MacDonald, but only because there is a miracle of 
a tunnel — Connaught Tunnel — which coaxes the 
line down by easy grades to Rogers Pass, the 
Illicilliwaet and Albert Canyon. Through all this 
stretch the scenery is superb. In the gorges and the 
canyon high mountains force the river and railway 
together, until the train runs in a semi-darkness be- 
tween sheer cliffs, with the water foaming and tearing 
itself forward in pent-up fury between harsh, rocky 
walls. Sometimes these walls encroach until the 
water channel is forced between two rocks standing 
up like doorposts, with not much more than a door- 
way space between them. Through these gateways 
the volume of water surges with an indescribable 
sense of power. 

At places, as in the valley of the Beavermouth, 
east of the Connaught Tunnel, the line climbs hugely 
upward on the sides of great ranges, and, on precari- 
ous ledges, hangs above a gigantic floor, tree-clad 
and fretted with water channels. The train crept 
over spidery bridges, spanning waterdrops, and 
crawled for miles beneath ranges of big timber snow- 
sheds. 

The train stopped at the pleasant little mountain 
town of Golden, where the Prince went " ashore," 
and there was the ceremony of reception. This was 
on the program. The next stop was not. 

West of the Albert Canyon, at a tiny station called 
Twin Butte, we passed another train standing in a 
siding, with a long straggle of men in khaki waiting 
on the platform and along the track, looking at us 
as we swept along. Abruptly we ceased to sweep 



Chief Morning Star 219 

along. The communication cord had been pulled, 
and we stopped with a jerk. 

The Prince had caught sight of the soldiers, and 
had recognized who they were. He had given 
orders to pull up, and almost before the brakes had 
ground home, he was out on the track and among the 
men, speaking to them and the officers, who were 
delighted at this unexpected meeting. 

The soldiers were English. They were men of 
the 25th Middlesex, H.A.C. and other regiments, 
four hundred all told. They had come from Omsk, 
in Russia, by way of the Pacific, and were being 
railed from Vancouver to Montreal in order to take 
ship for home. The men of the Middlesex were 
those made famous by the sinking of their trooper 
off the African coast in 19 16. Their behaviour then 
had been so admirable that it will be remem- 
bered the King cabled to them, " Well done, Die- 
hards!" 

By the isolated railway station and under the 
lonely mountains so far from their homes, they were 
drawn up, and the Prince made an informal inspec- 
tion of the men who had been so long away, and who 
had travelled the long road from Siberia on their 
way Blightyward. 

The inspection lasted only a few minutes, and the 
episode, spontaneous as it was characteristic, scarcely 
broke the run into Revelstoke. But it was the hap- 
piest of meetings. 

Revelstoke is a small, bright mountain town 
known, as its inhabitants say, for snow and straw- 
berries. It is their way of explaining that the land 



220 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

in this deep mountain valley is splendidly fertile, and 
that settlers have only to farm on a small scale in 
order to make a comfortable living, though in winter 
it is — well, of the mountains. The fishing there 
is also extremely good, and we were told almost 
fabulous tales of boys who on their journey home 
from school spent a few minutes at the creeks of the 
Columbia River, and went on their way bearing 
enough fish to make a dinner for a big family. 

The chief feature of Revelstoke's reception was a 
motor run up Revelstoke mountain, a four thousand 
feet ride up a stiffish road that climbed by corkscrew 
bends. This was thrilling enough, for there were 
abrupt depths when we saw Revelstoke far down on 
the valley floor looking neat and doll-like from this 
airman's eye-view, and we had to cross frail wooden 
bridges spanning deep crevices, some of them at 
ugly corners. 

From Revelstoke the train went on to Sicamous, 
where it remained until the middle of Sunday, Sep- 
tember 2 1 st. Sicamous is merely an hotel and a 
few houses beside a very beautiful lake. It is a 
splendid fishing centre, for a chain of lakes stretches 
south through the valleys to Okanagan. A branch 
line serves this district (which we were to explore 
later), where there are rich orchard lands. 

With Revelstoke, Sicamous acts as a distributing 
centre for the big Kootenay areas, that romantic 
land of the earliest trail breakers, those dramatic 
fellows who pushed all ways through the forest-clad 
valleys after gold and silver, and the other rich re- 
wards of the prospector. Even now the country has 



Chief Morning Star 221 

only been tapped, and there are many new discover- 
ies of ore in the grim rock of the district. 

A short stop at Kamloops on Sunday, September 
2 1 st, and then a straight run through the night 
brought us to Vancouver, with just a note of in- 
terest outside the Pacific city. For miles we passed 
dumps of war material, shells, ammunition boxes, 
the usual material of armies. It was lying discarded 
and decaying, and it told a tragic story. It was the 
war material that the Allies had prepared for Russia. 
These were the dumps that fed the transports for 
Russia plying from Vancouver. After the peace of 
Brest-Litovsk all work ceased about them, and there 
they remained to that day, monuments to the Bol- 
shevik Peace. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE PACIFIC CITIES: VANCOUVER AND 
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA 



VANCOUVER was land after a mountain 
voyage. With the feelings of a seafarer 
seeing cliffs after a long ocean journey, we 
reached common, flat country and saw homely asphalt 
streets. 

There can be no two points of view concerning 
the beauty and grandeur of the mountain scenery 
through which the Prince had passed, but after a 
succession of even the most stimulating gorges and 
glaciers one does turn gladly to a little humanity in 
the lump. Vancouver was humanity in the lump, 
an exceedingly large lump and of peculiarly warm 
and generous emotions. We were glad to meet 
crowds once more. 

There are some adequate streets in this great west- 
ern port of Canada. When Vancouver planned such 
opulent boulevards as Granville and Georgia streets, 
it must have been thinking hard about posterity, 
which will want a lot of space if only to drive its 
superabundant motors. But splendid and wide and 
long though these and other streets be, the mass of 
people which lined them on Monday, September 
22nd, was such as to set the most long-headed town 

222 



The Pacific Cities 223 

planner wondering if, after all, he had allowed 
enough room for the welcoming of Princes. 

From the vast, orderly throng massed behind the 
red and tartan of the Highland guard of honour at 
the station, thick ranks of people lined the whole of 
a long route to Stanley Park. 

This crowd not only filled the sidewalks with good- 
tempered liveliness, but it had sections in all the 
windows of the fine blocks of buildings the Prince 
passed. Now and then it attempted to emulate the 
small boys who ran level with the Prince's car cheer- 
ing to full capacity, and caring not a jot whether a 
" Mounty " of the escort or a following car went 
over them, but on the whole the crowd was more in 
hand than usual. 

This does not mean that it was less enthusiastic. 
The reception was of the usual stirring quality, and 
it culminated in an immense outburst in Stanley 
Park. 

It was a touch of genius to place the official recep- 
tion in the Park. It is, in a sense, the key-note of 
Vancouver. It gives it its peculiar quality of charm. 
It is a huge park occupying the entirety of a penin- 
sula extending from the larger peninsula upon which 
Vancouver stands. It has sea-water practically all 
round it. In it are to be found the greatest and 
finest trees in Canada in their most natural surround- 
ings. 

It is one big " reservation " for trees. Those 
who think that they can improve upon nature have 
had short shrift, and the giant Douglas pine, the firs 
and the cedars thrive naturally in a setting that has 



224 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

remained practically untouched since the day when 
the British seaman, Captain Vancouver, explored 
the sounds of this coast. It is an exquisite park hav- 
ing delightful forest walks and beautiful waterside 
views. 

Under the great trees and in a wilderness of 
bright flowers and flags as bright, a vast concourse 
of people was gathered about the pretty pavilion in 
the park to give the Prince a welcome. The func- 
tion had all the informality of a rather large picnic, 
and when the sun banished the Pacific " smoke," or 
mist, the gathering had infinite charm. 

After this reception the Prince went for a short 
drive in the great park, seeing its beautiful glades; 
looking at Burrard Inlet that makes its harbour one 
of the best in the world, and getting a glimpse of 
English Bay, where the sandy bathing beaches make 
it one of the best sea-side resorts in the world as 
well. At all points of the drive there were crowds. 
And while most of those on the sidewalks were 
Canadian, there was also, as at " Soo," a good 
sprinkling of Americans. They had come up from 
Seattle and Washington county to have a first-hand 
look at the Prince, and perhaps to " jump " New 
York and the eastern Washington in a racial desire 
to get in first. 

In this long drive, as well as during the visit we 
paid to Vancouver on our return from Victoria, there 
was a considerable amount of that mist which the 
inhabitants call " smoke," because it is said to be the 
result of forest fires along the coast, in the air. Yet 
in spite of the mist we had a definite impression of 



The Pacific Cities 225 

a fine, spacious city, beautifully situated and well 
planned, with distinguished buildings. And an im- 
pression of people who occupy themselves with the 
arts of business, progress and living as becomes a 
port not merely great now, but ordained to be 
greater tomorrow. 

It is a city of very definite attraction, as perhaps 
one imagined it would be, from a place that links 
directly with the magical Orient, and trades in silks 
and tea and rice, and all the romantic things of those 
lands, as well as in lumber and grain with all the 
colourful towns that fringe the wonderful Pacific 
Coast. 

Vancouver has been the victim of the " boom 
years." Under the spell of that " get-rich-quick " 
impulse, it outgrew its strength. It is getting over 
that debility now (and perhaps, after all, the " boom- 
sters " were right, if their method was anticipatory) 
and a fine strength is coming to it. When conditions 
ease and requisitioned shipping returns to its wharves, 
and its own building yards make up the lacking keels, 
it should climb steadily to its right position as one of 
the greatest ports in the British Empire. 



II 

Vancouver, as it is today, is a peculiarly British 
town. Its climate is rather British, for its winter 
season has a great deal of rain where other parts 
of Canada have snow, and its climate is Britishly 
warm and soft. It attracts, too, a great many 
settlers from home, its newspapers print more British 



226 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

news than one usually finds in Canadian papers (ex- 
cepting such great Eastern papers as, for instance, 
The Montreal Gazette), and its atmosphere, while 
genuinely Canadian, has an English tone. 

There is not a little of America, too, in its air, for 
great American towns like Seattle are very close 
across the border — in fact one can take a " jitney " 
to the United States as an ordinary item of sight- 
seeing. Under these circumstances it was not un- 
natural that there should be an interesting touch of 
America in the day's functions. 

The big United States battleship New Mexico 
and some destroyers were lying in the harbour, and 
part of the Prince's program was to have visited 
Admiral Rodman, who commanded. The ships, 
however, were in quarantine, and this visit had to 
be put off, though the Admiral himself was a guest 
at the brilliant luncheon in the attractive Vancouver 
Hotel, when representatives from every branch of 
civic life in greater Vancouver came together to 
meet the Prince. 

In his speech the Prince made direct reference to 
the American Navy, and to the splendid work it had 
accomplished in the war. He spoke first of Van- 
couver, and its position, now and in the future, as one 
of the greatest bases of British sea power. Van- 
couver, he explained, also brought him nearer to 
those other great countries in the British Dominions, 
Australia and New Zealand, and it seemed to him 
it was a fitting link in the chain of unity and co-opera- 
tion — a chain made more firm by the war — that 
the British Empire stretched round the world. It 



The Pacific Cities 227 

was a chain, he felt, of kindred races inspired by 
kindred ideals. Such ideals were made more ap- 
parent by the recent and lamented death of that 
great man, General Botha, who, from being an 
Africander leader in the war against the British 
eighteen years ago, had yet lived to be one of the 
British signatories at the Treaty of Versailles. 
Nothing else could express so significantly the 
breadth, justice and generosity of the British spirit 
and cause. 

Turning to Admiral Rodman, he went on to say 
that he felt that that spirit had its kinship in Amer- 
ica, whose Admiral had served with the Grand Fleet. 
Of the value of the work those American ships under 
Admiral Rodman did, there could be no doubt. He 
had helped the Allies with a most magnificent and 
efficient unit. 

At no other place had the response exceeded the 
warmth shown that day. The Prince's manner had 
been direct and statesmanlike, each of his points was 
clearly uttered, and the audience showed a keen quick- 
ness in picking them up. 

Admiral Rodman, a heavily-built figure, with the 
American light, dryness of wit, gave a new synonym 
for the word "Allies"; to him that word meant 
" Victory." It was the combination of every effort 
of every Ally that had won the war. Yet, at the 
same time, practical experience had taught him to 
feel that if it had not been for the way the Grand 
Fleet had done its duty from the very outset, the re- 
sult of the war would have been diametrically oppo- 
site. Feelingly, he described his service with the 



228 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Grand Fleet. He had placed himself unreservedly 
under the command of the British from the moment 
he had entered European waters, yet so complete was 
the co-operation between British and Americans that 
he often took command of British units. The splen- 
did war experience had done much to draw the great 
Anglo-Saxon nations together. Their years to- 
gether had ripened into friendship, then into com- 
radeship, then into brotherhood. And that brother- 
hood he wished to see enduring, so that if ever the 
occasion should again arise all men of Anglo-Saxon 
strain should stand together. 

There was real warmth of enthusiasm as the Ad- 
miral spoke. Those present, whose homes are close 
to those of their American neighbours living across 
a frontier without fortifications, in themselves ap- 
preciated the essential sympathy that exists between 
the two great nations. When the Admiral conveyed 
to the Prince a warm invitation to visit the United 
States, this enthusiasm reached its highest point. It 
was, in its way, an international lunch, and a happy 
one. 

ill 

After reviewing the Great War Veterans on the 
quay-side, the Prince left Vancouver just before 
lunch time on Tuesday, September 23rd, for Vic- 
toria, the capital of British Columbia, which lies 
across the water on Vancouver Island. 

It was a short run of five hours in one of the most 
comfortable boats I have ever been in — the Prin- 
cess Jlice, which is on the regular C.P.R. service, 



The Pacific Cities 229 

taking in the fjords and towns of the British Colum- 
bian coast. 

Leaving Vancouver, where the towering buildings 
give an authentic air of modern romance to the sky- 
line, a sense of glamour went with us across the sea. 
The air was still tinged with " smoke " and the 
fabled blue of the Pacific was not apparent, but we 
could see curiously close at hand the white cowl of 
Mount Baker, which is America, and we passed on a 
zig-zag course through the scattered St. Juan Islands, 
each of which seemed to be charming and lonely 
enough to stage a Jack London story. 

On the headlands or beaches of these islands there 
were always men and women and children to wave 
flags and handkerchiefs, and to send a cheer across 
the water to the Prince. One is surprised, so much 
is the romantic spell upon one, that the people on 
these islets of loneliness should know that the Prince 
was coming, that is, one is surprised until one realizes 
that this is Canada, and that telegraphs and tele- 
phones and up-to-date means of communication are 
commonplaces here as everywhere. 

Romance certainly invades one on entering Vic- 
toria. It seems a city out of a kingdom of Anthony 
Hope's, taken in hand by a modern Canadian ad- 
ministration. Steaming up James Bay to the har- 
bour landing one feels that it is a sparkling city where 
the brightest things in thrilling fiction might easily 
happen. 

The bay goes squarely up to a promenade. Be- 
hind the stone balustrade is a great lawn, and be- 
yond that, amid trees, is a finely decorative building, 



230 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

a fitted back-ground to any romance, though it is 
actually an hotel de luxe. To the left of the square 
head of the water is a distinguished pile; it is the 
Customs House, but it might be a temple of dark 
machinations. To the right is a rambling building, 
ornate and attractive, with low, decorated domes 
and outflung and rococo wings. That could easily 
be the palace of at least a sub-rosa royalty, though 
it is the House of Parliament. The whole of this 
square grouping of green grass and white buildings, 
in the particularly gracious air of Victoria gives a 
glamorous quality to the scene. 

Victoria's welcome to the Prince was modern 
enough. Boat sirens and factory hooters loosed a 
loud welcome as the steamer came in. A huge 
derrick arm that stretched a giant legend of Wel- 
come out into the harbour, swung that sign to face 
the Princess Alice all the time she was passing, and 
then kept pace on its rail track so that Welcome 
should always be abreast of the Prince. 

The welcome, too, of the crowds on that day 
when he landed, and on the next when he attended 
functions at the Parliament buildings, was as Cana- 
dian and up-to-date as anywhere else in the Domin- 
ion. The crowds were immense, and, at one time, 
when little girls stood on the edge of a path to strew 
roses in front of him as he walked, there was some 
danger of the eager throngs submerging both the 
little girls and the charming ceremony in anxiety to 
get close to him. 

The crowd in Parliament Square during the cere- 
monies of Wednesday, September 24th, was prodi- 



The Pacific Cities 231 

gious. From the hotel windows the whole of the 
great green space before the Parliament buildings 
was seen black with people who stayed for hours in 
the hope of catching sight of the Prince as he went 
from one ceremony to another. 

It was a gathering of many races. There were 
Canadians born and Canadians by residence. Vivid 
American girls come by steamer from Seattle were 
there. There were men and women from all races 
in Europe, some of them Canadians now, some to be 
Canadians presently. There were Chinese and 
Japanese in greater numbers than we had seen else- 
where, for Victoria is the nearest Canadian city to 
the East. There were Hindus, and near them sur- 
vivors of the aboriginal race, the Songhish Indians, 
who lorded it in Vancouver Island before the white 
man came. 

And giving a special quality to this big cosmopoli- 
tan gathering was the curious definitely English air 
ef Victoria. It is the most English of Canadian 
cities. Its even climate is the most English, and its 
air of well-furnished leisure is English. Because of 
this, or perhaps I should say the reason for this is 
that it is the home of many Englishmen. Not only 
do settlers from England come here in numbers, but 
many English families, particularly those from the 
Orient East, who get to know its charms when travel- 
ling through it on their way across Canada and home, 
come here to live when they retire. And this dis- 
tinctly English atmosphere gets support in great 
measure from the number of rich Canadians who, on 
ceasing their life's work, come here to live in leisure. 



232 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Yet though this is responsible for the growing up 
in Victoria of some of the most beautiful residential 
districts in Canada, where beautiful houses combine 
with the lovely scenery of country and sea in giving 
the city and its environments a delightful charm, 
Victoria is vigorously industrial too. 

It has shipbuilding and a brisk commerce in lum- 
ber, machinery and a score of other manufactories, 
and it serves both the East and the Canadian and' 
American coast. It has fine, straight, broad streets, 
lined with many distinguished buildings, and its 
charm has virility as well as ease. 



IV 

The Prince made a long break in his tour here, 
remaining until Sunday, September 28th. Most of 
this stay was given over to restful exercise ; he played 
golf and went for rides through the beautiful country- 
side. There were several functions on his pro- 
gram, however. He visited the old Navy Yard 
and School at Esquimault, and he took a trip on the 
Island railway to Duncans, Ladysmith, Nanaimo and 
Qualicum. 

At each of these towns he had a characteristic 
welcome, and at some gained an insight into local in- 
dustries, such as lumbering and the clearing of land 
for farming. On the return journey he mounted 
the engine cab and came most of the way home in 
this fashion. 

The country in the Island is serene and attractive, 
extremely like England, being reminiscent of the rol- 



The Pacific Cities 233 

ling wooded towns in Surrey, though the English- 
man misses the hedges. The many sea inlets add 
beauty to the scenery, and there are delightful rides 
along roads that alternately run along the water's 
edge, or hang above these fjords on high cliff ledges. 
In one of our inland drives we were taken to an 
extraordinary and beautiful garden. It is a serene 
place, laid out with exquisite skill. In one part of it 
an old quarry has been turned into a sunken garden. 
Here with straight cliffs all round there nests a 
wilderness of flowers. Small, artificial crags have 
been reared amid the rockeries and the flowers, and 
by small, artificial paths one can climb them. A 
stream cascades down the cliff, and flows like a beau- 
tiful toy-thing through the dainty artificial scenery. 
In another part of the grounds is a Japanese gar- 
den, with tiny pools and moon bridges and bamboo 
arbours — and flowers and flowers and flowers. 
And not only does the maker of this enchanted spot 
throw it open to the public, but he has built for 
visitors a delightful chalet where they can take tea. 
This chalet is a big, comely hall, with easy chairs and 
gate tables. It is provided with all the American 
magazines. In a tiny outbuilding is a scullery with 
cups and saucers and plates and teapots — all for 
visitors. 

The visitors take their own food, and use these 
articles. The Chinese cook at the house near by 
provides boiling water, and all the owner asks is 
that those who use his crockery shall wash it up at 
the sink provided, and with the dish-cloths provided, 
and leave it in readiness for the next comer. 



234 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

That generosity is the final and completing touch 
to the charm of that exquisite place, which is a 
veritable " Garden of Allah " amid the beauties of 
Canadian scenery. 

Another drive was over the Malahat Pass, 
through superb country, to a big lumber camp on 
Shawnigan Lake. Here we saw the whole of the 
operations of lumbering from the point where a log- 
ger notches a likely tree for cutting to the final mo- 
ment when Chinese workmen feed the great trunks 
to the steam saw that hews them into beams and 
planks. 

Having selected a tree, the first logger cuts into it 
a deep wedge which is to give it direction in its fall. 
These men show an almost uncanny skill. They get 
the line of a great tree with the handle of their axes, 
as an artist uses a pencil, and they can cut their 
notches so accurately that they can " fall " a tree on 
a pocket-handkerchief. 

Two men follow this expert. They cut smaller 
notches in the tree, and insert their " boards " into 
it. These " boards " have a steel claw which bites 
into the tree when the men stand on the board, the 
idea being both to raise the cutters above the sprawl- 
ing roots, and to give their swing on the saw an 
elasticity. It is because they cut so high that Canada 
is covered with tall stumps that make clearing a prob- 
lem. The stumps are generally dynamited, or torn 
up by the roots by cables that pass through a block on 
the top of a tree to the winding-drum of a donkey- 
engine. 

When the men at the saw have cut nearly through 



The Pacific Cities 235 

the tree, they sing out a drawling, musical " Stand 
aw-ay," gauging the moment with the skill of woods- 
men, for there is no sign to the lay eye. In a few 
moments the giant tree begins to fall stiffly. It 
moves slowly, and then with its curious rigidity tears 
swiftly through the branches of neighbouring trees, 
coming to the ground with a thump very much like 
the sound of an H.E. shell, and throwing up a red 
cloud of torn bark. The sight of a tree falling is a 
moving thing; it seems almost cruel to bring it down. 

A donkey-engine mounted on big logs, that has 
pulled itself into place by the simple method of 
anchoring its steel rope to a distant tree — and pull- 
ing, jerks the great trunks out of the heart of the 
forest. A block and tackle are hitched to the top 
of a tall tree that has been left standing in a clear- 
ing, and the steel ropes are placed round the fallen 
trunks. As this lifting line pulls them from their 
resting-place, they come leaping and jerking forward, 
charging down bushes, rising over stumps, dropping 
and hurdling over mounds until it seems that they are 
actually living things struggling to escape. The 
ubiquitous donkey-engine loads the great logs on 
trucks, and an engine, not very much bigger than a 
donkey-engine, tows the long cars of timber down 
over a sketchy track to the waterside. 

Here the loads are tipped with enormous splashes 
into the water to wait in the " booms " until they are 
wanted at the mill. Then they are towed across, 
sure-footed men jump on to them and steer them to 
the big chute, where grappling teeth catch them and 
pull them up until they reach the sawing platform. 



236 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

They are jerked on to a movable truck, that grips 
them, and turns them about with mechanical arms 
into the required position for cutting, and then log 
and truck are driven at the saw blade, which slices 
beams or planks out of the primitive trunk with an 
almost sinister ease. 

Uncanny machines are everywhere in this mill. 
Machines carve shingles and battens or billets with 
an almost human accuracy. A conveyor removes all 
sawdust from the danger of lights with mechanical 
intelligence. Another carries off all the scrapwood 
and takes it away to a safe place in the mill yard 
where a big, wire-hooded furnace, something like a 
straight hop oast-house, burns every scrap of it. 

The life in the lumber camp is a hard life, but it 
is well paid, it is independent, and the food is a 
revelation. The loggers' lunch we were given was a 
meal fit for gourmets. It was in a rough pitch-pine 
hut at rough tables. Clam-soup was served to us in 
cylindrical preserved meat cans on which the maker's 
labels still clung — but it lost none of its delightful 
flavour for that. Beef was served cut in strips in a 
great bowl, and we all reached out for the vegetables. 
There were mammothine bowls of mixed salad pos- 
sessing an astonishing (to British eyes) lavishness of 
hard-boiled egg, lemon pie (lemon curd pie) with a 
whipped-egg crown, deep apple pie (the logger eats 
pie — which many people will know better as " tart " 
— three times a day) , a marvellous fruit salad in 
jelly, and the finest selection of plums, peaches, 
apples, and oranges I had seen for a long day. 

I was told that this was the regular meal of the 



The Pacific Cities 237 

loggers, and I know it was cooked by a chef (there 
is a French or Belgian or Canadian chef in most log- 
ging camps), for I talked with him. To live in a 
lonely forest, in a shack, and to work tremendously 
hard, may not be all the life a man wants, but it has 
compensations. 

I understand that just about then the lumbermen 
were prone to striking. In one place they were de- 
manding sheets, and in another they had refused to 
work because, having ordered two cases of eggs from 
a store, the tradesman had only been able to send the 
one he had in stock.. 

While we were in this camp we had some ex- 
perience of the danger of forest fires. We had 
walked up to the head of the clearing, when one of 
the men of a group we had left working a short dis- 
tance behind, came running up to say a fire had 
started. We went back, and in a place where, ten 
minutes before, there had been no sign of fire, flames 
and smoke were rising over an area of about one 
hundred yards square. Little tongues of flame were 
racing over the " slashings " (i.e., the debris of bark 
and splintered limbs that litter an area which has 
been cut), snakes of flame were writhing up standing 
trees, sparks blown by the wind were dropping into 
the dry " slashings " twenty, thirty and fifty yards 
away and starting fresh fires. We could see with 
what incredible rapidity these fires travelled, and 
how dangerous they can be once they are well alight. 
This fire was surrounded, and got under with water 
and shovelled earth, but we were shown a big stretch 
of hillside which another such fire had swept bare in 



238 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

a little under two hours. The summer is the dan- 
gerous time, for " slashings " and forests are then 
dry, and one chance spark from a badly screened 
donkey-engine chimney will start a blaze. When the 
fire gets into wet and green wood it soon expires. 

These drives, for us, were the major events in an 
off time, for there was very little happening until the 
night of the 28th, when we went on board the 
Princess Alice again, to start on our return journey. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

APPLE LAND: OKANAGAN AND KOOTENAY LAKES 



ON Monday, September 29th, the Prince of 
Wales returned to Vancouver and took car 
to New Westminster, the old capital of Brit- 
ish Columbia before picturesque Victoria assumed 
the reins. 

New Westminster was having its own festival 
that day, so the visit was well timed. The local ex- 
hibition was to begin, and the Prince was to perform 
the opening ceremony. Under many fine arches, one 
a tall torii, erected by Chinese and Japanese Cana- 
dians, the procession of cars passed through the 
town, on a broad avenue that runs alongside the 
greac Fraser River. Drawn up at the curb were 
many floats that were to take part in the trades' pro- 
cession through the town to the exhibition grounds. 
Most of them were ingenious and attractive. There 
were telegraph stations on wagons, corn dealers' 
shops, and the like, while on the bonnet of one car 
was a doll nurse, busy beside a doll bed. Another 
automobile had turned itself into an aeroplane, 
while another had obliterated itself under a giant 
bully beef can to advertise a special kind of tinned 
meat. 

All cars were decorated with masses of spruce 
239 



240 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

and maple leaf, now beautiful in autumn tints of 
crimson and gold. And Peace and Britannia, of 
course, were there with attendant angels and nations, 
comely girls whose celestial and symbolical garments 
did not seem to be the right fashion for a day with 
more than a touch of chill in the air. 

Through this avenue of fantasy, colour and cheery 
humanity the Prince drove through the town, which 
seems to have the air of brooding over its past, to 
the exhibition ground, which he opened, and where 
he presented medals to many soldiers. 



II 

From New Westminster the Royal train struck 
upward through the Rocky Mountains by way of 
the Kettle Valley. It passed through a land of ter- 
rific and magnificent scenery. It equalled anything 
we had seen in the more famous beauty spots, but it 
was more savage. The valleys appeared closer knit 
and deeper, and the sharp and steep mountains 
pinched the railway and river gorges together until 
we seemed to be creeping along the floor of a mighty 
passage-way of the dark, aboriginal gods. 

Again and again the train was hanging over the 
deep, misted cauldron of the valley, again and again 
it slipped delicately over the span of cobweb across 
the sky that is a Canadian bridge. In this land of 
steep gradients, sharp curves and lattice bridges, the 
train was divided into two sections, and each, with 
two engines to pull it, climbed through the mountain 
passes. 



Apple Land 241 



This tract of country has only within the last few 
years been tapped by a railway that seems even yet 
to have to fight its way forward against Nature, bar- 
barous, splendid and untamed. It was built to the 
usual ideal of Canada, that vision which ignores the 
handicaps of today for the promise of tomorrow. 
Yet even today it taps the rich lake valleys where 
mining and general farming is carried on, and where 
there are miles of orchards already growing some of 
the finest apples and peaches in Canada. 

On the morning of Tuesday, September 30th, the 
train climbed down from the higher and rougher 
levels to Penticton, a small, bright, growing town 
that stands as focus for the immense fruit-growing 
district about Okanagan Lake. 

Here, after a short ceremony, the Prince boarded 
the steamer Sicamous, a lake boat of real Canadian 
brand; a long white vessel built up in an extraordi- 
nary number of tiers, so that it looked like an elabo- 
rate wedding-cake, but a useful craft whose humpy 
stern paddle-wheel can push her through a six-foot 
shallow or deep water with equal dispatch. And a 
delightfully comfortable boat into the bargain, with 
well-sheltered and spacious decks, cosy cabins and 
bath-rooms, and a big dining saloon, which, placed 
in the very centre of the ship with the various gal- 
leries of the decks rising around it, has an air of be- 
longing to one of those attractive old Dickensian 
inns. 

On this vessel the Prince was carried the whole 
length of Okanagan Lake, which winds like a blue 
fillet between mountains for seventy miles. On the 



242 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ledges and in the tight valleys of these heights he saw 
the formal ranks of a multitude of orchards. 

A short distance along the lake the Sicamous 
pulled in to the toy quay of Summerland, a town 
born of and existing for fruit, and linked up with the 
outer world by the C.P.R. Lake Service that owned 
our own vessel. 

All the children of Summerland had collected on 
the quayside to sing to and to cheer the Prince, and, 
as he stood on the upper deck and waved his hat 
cheerfully at them, they cheered a good deal more. 
When he went ashore and was taken by the grown-up 
Olympians to examine the grading and packing sheds, 
where the fruits of all the orchards are handled and 
graded by mechanical means, prepared for the 
market, and sold on the co-operative plan, the kiddies 
exchanged sallies with those waiting on the vessel, 
flipped big apples up at them, and cheered or jeered 
as they were caught or missed. 

The Sicamous went close inshore at Peachland, 
another daughter town of Mother Fruit, to salute 
the crowd of people who had come out from the 
pretty bungalow houses that nestle among the green 
trees on a low and pretty shore, and who stood on 
the quay in a mass to send a cheer to him. 

At Okanagan Landing, at the end of the lake, he 
took car to Vernon, a purposeful and attractive town 
which is the commercial heart of the apple industry. 
Indeed, there was no need to ask the reason for Ver- 
non's being. Even the decorations were wrought 
out of apples, and under an arch of bright, cherry- 
red apples the Prince passed on to the sports ground, 



Apple Land 243 



and on to a platform the corner posts of which were 
crowned with pyramids of apples, and in the centre 
of which was a model apple large enough to suit the 
appetite of Gargantua. 

In front of this platform was a grand stand 
crowded with children of all races from Scandinavian 
to Oriental, and these sang with the resistless hearti- 
ness of Canada. The Oriental is a pretty useful 
asset in British Columbia, for in addition to his gifts 
of industry he is an excellent agriculturist. 

After the ceremonies the Prince had an orgy of 
orchards. 

Fruit growing is done with a large gesture. The 
orchards are neat and young and huge. In a run of 
many miles the Prince passed between masses of pre- 
cisely aligned trees, and every tree was thick with 
bright and gleaming red fruit. Thick, indeed, is a 
mild word. The short trees seemed practically all 
fruit, as though they had got into the habit of grow- 
ing apples instead of leaves. Many of the branches 
bore so excessive a burden that they had been torn 
out by the weight of the fruit upon them. 

It was a marvellous pageant of fruit in mass. 
And the apples themselves were of splendid quality, 
big and firm and glowing, each a perfect specimen of 
its school. We were able to judge because the land- 
girls, after tossing aprons full of specimens (not al- 
ways accurately) into the Prince's car, had enough 
ammunition left over for the automobiles that fol- 
lowed. 

Attractive land girls they were, too. Not garbed 
like British land-girls, but having all their dashing 



244 Westward with the Frince of Wales 

qualities. Being Canadians they carried the love of 
silk stockings on to the land, and it was strange to see 
this feminine extremity under the blue linen overall 
trousers or knickers. They were cheery, sun-tanned, 
laughing girls. They were ready for the Prince at 
every gate and every orchard fence, eager and ready 
to supplement their gay enthusiasm with this apple 
confetti. 

The Prince stopped here and there to chat with 
fruit growers, and to congratulate them on their 
fine showing. Now he stopped to talk to a wounded 
officer, who had been so cruelly used in the war that 
he had to support himself on two sticks. Now he 
stopped to pass a " How d'y' do " to a mob of 
trousered land-girls who gathered brightly about his 
car, showing himself as laughing and as cheerful as 
they. 

The cars left the land of growing apples and 
turned down the lake in a superb run of thirty-six 
miles to Kelowna. This road skirts fairyland. It 
winds high up on a shoulder above Long Lake, that 
makes a floor of living azure between the buttresses 
and slopes of the mountains. Only when it is tired 
of the heights does it drop to the lake level, and 
sweeping through a filigree of trees, speeds along a 
road that is but an inch or two above the still mirror 
of Wood Lake, on the polished surface of which 
there is a delicate fret of small, rocky islets. So, in 
magnificent fashion, he came to Kelowna, and the 
Sicamous, that carried him back to the train. 



Apple Land 245 



in 

Through the night and during the next morning 
the train carried the Prince deeper in the mountains* 
skirting in amazing loops, when the train seemed al- 
most to be biting its tail, steep rocky cliffs above 
white torrents, or the shining blue surfaces of lakes 
such as Arrow Lake, that formed the polished floor 
of valleys. Now and then we passed purposeful 
falls, and by them the power houses that won light 
and motive force for the valley towns from the fall- 
ing water. There are those who fear the harnessing 
of water-power, because it may mean the spoiling of 
beautiful scenery. Such buildings as I saw in no way 
marred the view, but rather added to it a touch of 
human picturesqueness. 

Creeping down the levels, with discretion at the 
curves, the train came in the rain to Nelson on Wed- 
nesday, October 1st. Rain spoilt the reception at 
Nelson, a town that thrives upon the agricultural 
and mining products of the hills about. There 
seemed to be a touch of mining grey in the air of the 
town, but, as in all towns of Canada, no sense of un- 
happiness, no sense of poverty — indeed, in the 
whole of Canada I saw five beggars and no more 
( though, of course, there may have been more ) . Of 
these one man was blind, and two were badly crippled 
soldiers. 

There are no poor in Nelson, so I was told, and no 
unemployed. 

" If a man's unemployed," said a Councillor with 
a twinkle in his eye, " he's due for the penitentiary. 



246 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

With labourers getting five dollars a day, and being 
able to demand it because of the scarcity of their 
kind, when a man who says he can't find work has 
something wrong with him ... as a matter of fact 
the penitentiary idea is only speculative. There's 
never been a test case of this kind." 

I don't suppose there have been many test cases of 
that kind in the whole of Canada, for certainly " the 
everyday people " everywhere have a cheerful and 
self-dependent look. 

At Nelson the Prince embarked on another lake 
boat, the Nasookin, after congratulating rival bands, 
one of brass, and one (mainly boys) of bagpipes, on 
their tenacity in tune in the rain. Nelson gave him 
a very jolly send-off. The people managed to in- 
vade the quay in great numbers, and those who 
were daring clambered to the top of the freight 
cars standing on the wharf, the better to give him a 
cheer. 

As the boat steamed out into the Kootenay River 
scores of the nattiest little gasoline launches flying 
flags escorted him for the first mile or so, chugging 
along beside the Nasookin, or falling in our wake in 
a bright procession of boats. Encouraged by the 
" movie " men they waved vigorously, and many 
good " shoots " of them were filmed. 

At Balfour, where the narrow river, after passing 
many homesteads of great charm nestling amid the 
greenery of the low shore that fringes the high moun- 
tains, turns into Kootenay Lake, the Prince went 
ashore. Here is a delightful chalet which was once 
an hotel, but is now a sanatorium for Canadian 



Apple Land 247 



soldiers. Its position is idyllic. It stands above 
river and lake, with the fine mountains backing it, 
and across the river are high mountains. 

Over these great slopes on this grey day clouds 
were gathered, crawling down the shoulders in bil- 
lows, or blowing in odd and disconnected masses 
and streamers. These odd ragged scarves and bil- 
lows look like strayed sheep from the cloud fold, 
lost in the deep valleys that sit between the blue-grey 
mountain sides. 

The Prince spent some time visiting the sanator- 
ium, and chatting with the inmates, and then played 
golf on the course here. The C.P.R. were, mean- 
while, indulging themselves in one of their habitual 
feats. The lakes make a gap in the line between 
Nelson, or rather Balfour siding, and Kootenay 
Landing at the head of the water. Over this water- 
jump the whole train, solid steel and weighing a 
thousand tons, was bodily carried. 

Two great barges were used. The long cars were 
backed on to these with delicate skill — for the slight- 
est waywardness of a heavy, all-steel car on a float- 
ing barge is a matter of danger, and each loaded 
barge was then taken up the lake by a tug grappled 
alongside. 

At Kootenay Landing the delicate process was re- 
versed, and all was carried out without mishap 
though it was a dark night, and the railwaymen had 
to work with the aid of searchlights. Kootenay 
Landing is, in itself, something of a wonder. In the 
dark, as we waited for the train to be made up, it 
seemed as solid as good hard land can make it. But 



248 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

as the big Canadian engine came up with the first car 
we felt our " earth M sway slightly, and in the beam 
of the big headlight we saw the reason. Kootenay 
Landing is a station in the air. It is built up on 
piles. 






CHAPTER XIX 

THE PRAIRIES AGAIN 



IN cold weather and through a snowfall that had 
powdered the slopes and foothills of the Rocky 
Mountains the Prince, on Thursday, October 
2nd, reached the prairies again. Now he was travel- 
ling well to the south of his former journey on a line 
that ran just above the American border. 

In this bleak and rolling land he was to call in the 
next two days at a series of small towns whose very 
names — McLeod, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, 
Maple Creek, Swift Current, Moose Jaw and 
Regina — had in them a savour of the old, brave 
days when the Red Man was still a power, and set- 
tlers chose their names off-hand from local things. 

McLeod, on the Old Man River, just escapes the 
foothills. It is prairies, a few streets, a movie 
" joint," an hotel and a golf course. In McLeod we 
saw the dawn of the Mackinaw, or anyhow first saw 
the virtues of that strange coat which seems to have 
been adapted from the original of the Biblical Joseph 
by a Highland tailor. It is a thick, frieze garment, 
cut in Norfolk style. The colour is heroic red, or 
blue or mauve or cinnamon, over which black lines 
are laid in a plaid tracery. 

We realized its value as a warmth-giver while we 
249 



250 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

stood amid a crowd of them as the Prince received 
addresses. Among the crowd was a band of Blood 
Indians of the Blackfeet Tribe, whose complexions 
in the cold looked blue under their habitual brown- 
red. They had come to lay their homage before 
him and to present an Indian robe. The Prince 
shook hands and chatted with the chiefs as well as 
their squaws, and with the missionary who had spent 
his life among these Red Men, and had succeeded in 
mastering the four or five sounds that make up the 
Indian language. 

We talked to an old chief upon whose breast were 
the large silver medals that Queen Victoria and King 
George had had specially struck for their Indian sub- 
jects. These have become signs of chieftainship, 
and are taken over by the new chief when he is 
elected by the tribesmen. With this chief was his 
son, a fine, quiet fellow in the costume of the present 
generation of Indians, the cowboy suit. He had 
served all through the war in a Canadian regiment. 

At Lethbridge, the next town, there was a real and 
full Indian ceremonial. Before a line of tepees, or 
Indian lodges, the Prince was received by the Chiefs 
of the Blood Tribe of the Blackfeet Nation, and 
elected one of them with the name of Mekastro, 
that is Red Crow. 

This name is a redoubtable one in the annals of 
the Blackfeet. It has been held by their most 
famous chieftains and has been handed down from 
generation to generation. It was a Chief Red Crow 
who signed the Wolseley Treaty in '77. Upon his 
election the Prince was presented with an historic 



The Prairies Again 251 

headdress of feathers and horns, a beautiful thing 
that had been worn by the great fighting leaders of 
the race. 

There were gathered about the Prince in front of 
these tall, painted tepees many chiefs of strange, odd- 
sounding names. One of these immobile and aqui- 
line men was Chief Shot on Both Sides, another Chief 
Weasel Fat, another Chief One Spot, another Chief 
Many White Horses. They had a dignity and an 
unyielding calm, and if some of them wore befeath- 
ered bowler hats, instead of the sunray feathered 
headdress, it did not detract from their high auster- 
ity. Chief One Spot — u he whose voice can be 
heard three miles " — was a splendid and upright 
old warrior of eighty; he had not only been present 
at the historic treaty of '77, but had been one of 
the signatories. 

The Prince chatted with these chiefs, while the 
Lethbridge people, who had shown extraordinary 
heartiness since the public welcome in the chief 
square of the town, crowded close around. While 
he was talking, the Prince asked if he could be shown 
the interior of one of the wigwams, and his brother, 
Chief Weasel Fat, took him to his own, over the door 
of which was painted rudely the emblem of the bald- 
headed eagle. 

The wigwam is a fine airy home. Its canvas walls 
are supported by tall, leaning poles bound at the top. 
There is no need of a centre pole, and a wood fire 
burning on a circular hearth sent up a coil of smoke 
through the opening at the top of the poles. 

The floor was strewn with bright soft rugs, on 



252 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

which squaws in vivid red robes were sitting, listening 
to all that was said with impassive faces. The walls 
were decorated with strips of warm cloth upon which 
had been sewn Indian figures and animals. The 
wide floor space also held a rattanwork bed, musical 
instruments and the like; certainly it was a more 
comfortable and commodious place than its bell-tent 
shape would suggest. 

Leaving the exhibition grounds, on which the en- 
campment stood, the Prince passed under an arch 
made of Indian clothes of white antelope skin, beads 
and feathers, and after reviewing the war veterans, 
went to the town ball that had been arranged in his 
honour. 

Lethbridge is a mixture of the plain and the pit. 
It is a great grain centre, and there is no mistaking 
its prairie air, yet superimposed upon this is the at- 
mosphere of, say, a Lancashire or Yorkshire mining 
town. Coal and other mines touch with a sense of 
dark industrial bustle the easy air of the plain town. 
It is a Labour town, and a force in Labour politics. 
That, of course, made not the slightest difference to 
its welcome; indeed, perhaps it tinged that greeting 
with a touch of independent heartiness that made it 
notable. 

As a town it impresses with its vividity at once. 
That, indeed, is the quality of most Canadian cities. 
They capture one with their air of modernity and 
vivacity at first impact. True, one sometimes finds 
that the town that seemed great and bustling dwin- 
dles after a few fine streets into suburbs of dirt road- 
ways, but one has been impressed. It may be very 



The Prairies Again 253 

good window dressing, though, on the other hand, it 
is probably good planning which concentrates all the 
activity and interests of the town in the decisively 
main avenues. 

II 

Friday, October 3rd, saw the Prince visiting a 
string of three towns. 

Medicine Hat was the first of these, an attractive, 
park-like place full of " pep." Medicine Hat's 
claim to fame beyond its name lies in the fact that, 
having discovered that it was sitting upon a vast sub- 
terranean reservoir of natural gas, it promptly har- 
nessed it to its own use. Now, that elemental thing 
is in the control of humanity, and heats the town, and 
tamely drives the wheels of industry. 

The outstanding ceremony was the way little boys 
suddenly took fright on a roof. In the middle of 
the town, beside the street, is a tall, thin standpipe, 
and this standpipe was to demonstrate a " shoot off " 
of the gas. Scores of small boys climbed on to the 
roofs of neighbouring sheds to see the fun. First 
there was a meek, submissive flame burning at the top 
of the pipe, and looking weak in the fine sunlight. 
Then, abruptly, the flame shot up a hundred feet, 
and there was a loud roaring. Not only was the 
roaring a terrifying thing, but the force of that rush 
of gas made the ground, the roof and the little boys 
tremble. Little boys came off that roof in record 
time, and with such a clatter that the effort of the 
standpipe almost lost its place as a star turn. This 
tremendous pressure is not habitual; it is, I believe, 



254 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

obtained by bursting a charge in one of the gas wells. 

The Prince also saw the uses to which the gas was 
put in a big pottery mill. The kilns here were an in- 
candescent mass of fire, the work of the easily con- 
trolled gas that does the work with a tithe of the 
labour and at a mere fraction of the cost necessitated 
by ordinary baking kilns. 

Maple Creek and Swift Current were stepping- 
off places, with all their populations packed in the 
square about the station to give the Prince a hearty 
greeting. At Maple Creek the pretty daughters of 
the township were very much in evidence, and held 
His Royal Highness up with autograph albums. 

Moose Jaw, one of the few towns where a quaint 
name is traceable, for it is the creek where the white 
man mended the cart with a moose jaw-bone, which 
the Prince reached on the morning of October 4th, 
is a bigger town and proud of its position as a grain, 
food and machinery distributing centre for Southern 
Saskatchewan. In its station courtyard it had built 
up an admirable exhibit of its vegetables and fruit, 
its sides of bacon, its grain in ear, its porridge oats 
in packets, and its butter and cream in drums and 
churns; while chiefest of all it showed ramparts of 
some of the two million sacks of flour it handles an- 
nually. The whole of the exhibit was set in a moat 
of grain and potatoes. 

The Prince went to the University Grounds, where 
a mighty crowd attended the welcoming ceremony, 
and where a wild and timeless waltz-quadrille of 
motors which straggled all-whither over the grounds, 
marked the attempts of people to locate and follow 



The Prairies Again 255 

him when he drove away to the hospital and a big 
packing factory. At the packing plant he saw the 
whole process of handling meat, from the moment 
when cowboys in chaps drove the herd to the pens to 
the final jointing of the steer. 

From Moose Jaw he went to Regina, which he 
reached that afternoon. Regina is the capital of 
Saskatchewan, but an accidental capital. Somewhere 
about 1880 it was decided to start itself in quite an- 
other place. Qu'i\ppelle, where there was a Hudson 
Bay Fort and the country was attractive, was the 
site chosen. And Qu'Appelle opened its mouth too 
wide — or, anyhow so the version of the story I was 
told goes. The land-owners there asked an outside 
number of million dollars, and the townplanners 
went to Pile o' Bones instead. 

Pile o' Bones was a point near Wascana Lake 
where there had been a big slaughter of buffaloes. 
It was a point of no importance, but Canadians don't 
mind that sort of thing. When they make up their 
minds to build a city, a city arises. Regina arose, 
broad and bustling, a trifle chilly as becomes a city 
of the prairie, rather flat and not altogether attrac- 
tive, yet purposeful. 

It also gained another reason for regard by be- 
coming the headquarters of the " Mounties," the 
Royal North-West Mounted Police, whose main bar- 
racks are here. We saw something of the discipline 
of that fine service in the way the big crowds were 
handled, for the Prince drove through the streets in 
the order and state of a London or New York pag- 
eant. 



256 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

The Parliament Buildings are beautifully situated 
before a wide stretch of water. They are the semi- 
classical, domed, white stone buildings of the design 
of those at Edmonton and other cities — a sort of 
standardized parliament building in fact. Before 
them, on the terraces and lawn that shelved down 
to the water, the big throng made a scene of quick 
beauty. There were ranks of pretty nurses, rank 
upon rank of khaki veterans, battalions of boy scouts 
mainly divorced from hats which were perpetually 
aloft on upraised and enthusiastic poles, aisles of sit- 
ting wounded whom the Prince shook hands with, 
and thick, supporting masses of civilians. Lining 
this throng were unbending fillets of scarlet statues, 
the " Mounties " of the guard. And humanizing 
the whole were solid banks of school-children who 
sang and cheered at the right as well as the wrong 
moment. 

The presentation of medals — one to a blinded 
doctor, who, led by a comrade, received the most 
poignant storm of cheers I have ever heard in my life 
— and a giant public reception finished that day's 
ceremonies. Sunday, October 5 th, was a day of rest, 
and Monday was the day of the " Mounties." 

The Prince showed a particular interest in his 
visit to the Headquarters of this splendid and ro- 
mantic corps. The Royal North-West Mounted 
Police is a classic figure in the history of the Empire. 
The day is now past when the lonely red rider of the 
wilds stood for the only token of awe and authority 
among Indian tribes and " bad men " camps, but 
though that may be there are no more useful fellows 



The Prairies Again 257 

than these smart and sturdy men, who, scarlet-coated, 
and with their Stetsons at a daring angle, add a dash 
of colour and bravery to the streets of Western 
Canada. 

In his inspection the Prince saw the reason why the 
physique of the men should be so splendid and their 
nerve so sure. The training of the R.N.W.M.P. 
makes no appeal to the weakling of spirit or flesh. 
He saw their firm discipline. He saw them breaking 
in the bucking bronchos they had to ride. He saw 
them go through exhausting mounted tests. His 
congratulations on their wonderful show were ex- 
pressed with great warmth. 

Ill 

From Regina the Prince took a holiday. He went 
up to the sporting country near Qu'Appelle for duck 
and game shooting, spending from Monday, Octo- 
ber 6th, until Friday, October 10th, there. This 
district abounds in duck, and the Prince and his staff 
had very fair sport. During his stay the weather 
suddenly turned colder, the rivers froze over and 
snow fell. So sudden was the cold snap that one of 
those with the Prince was caught napping. He woke 
up to find that his false teeth were frozen into the 
solid block of ice that had been water the night be- 
fore. He had to take the tooth glass to the kitchen 
of the house where he was staying, and thaw it 
before he could even articulate his emotions ade- 
quately. 

Riding in a fast car from the scene of the sport to 
the station gave the Prince an indication of what 



258 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

winter would be like in the prairies, where the wind 
from the north sweeps down unresisted, and with 
such a force that it seems to go right through all 
coats, save the Canadian winter armour of " coon 
coat " or fur. 

Brandon and Portage la Prairie, two determined 
little towns, gave the Prince a snow welcome. The 
weather kept neither grown-ups nor children away 
from the liveliest of greetings. They were attrac- 
tive halts in a run that took the Prince to Winnipeg. 

In Winnipeg we appreciated the virtues of central 
heating, for the wind made the whole universe extra- 
ordinarily cold. Up to this I had considered central 
heating a stuffy subject, and I am yet not fully con- 
verted, for though there are those who say it can be 
controlled quite easily, I have yet to meet the super- 
man who can do it. 

All the same, steam heating has its virtues. On 
those cold days in Winnipeg we lived in a world that 
knew not draughts. It was almost a solemn joy to 
sit in a bath, and to feel that though half of one was 
in hot water, the other half was also comfortable and 
not the prey of every devilish current of icy air such 
as sports itself in those damp refrigerators, the 
British bathrooms. Naturally, since we are staying 
in a Canadian hotel of the up-to-date kind, a bath- 
room was attached to our bedroom as a mere matter 
of course. But if we had had to wander Anglicanly 
along corridors in search of a bathroom we should 
still have been draught free, for central heating deals 
with corridors, and stairways, and halls and lounges 
with one universal gesture. 



The Prairies Again 259 

Not merely in so fine an hotel as the " Royal Alex- 
andra," but in the private houses and the " apart- 
ments " (English — " flats ") , central heat and good 
bathrooms are items of everyday — though many 
Canadians burn an open fire in their sitting-rooms for 
the comfortable look it gives. 

These things are not merely for comfort, but they 
are, with the hardwood floors, the mail chutes in 
" apartment " houses and the rest, part of the great 
science of labour-saving, which the whole of America 
practises. 

One realizes the need of labour-saving when one 
sees in a theatre vestibule the following notice : 

" ALL CHILDREN NOT LEFT WITH THE 
MATRON MUST BE PAID FOR " 

As nurses are rare, and servants are rare, the 
Americans have to organize themselves to simplify 
the task of housekeeping. 

The " apartments " are compact and neat, ar- 
ranged for easy handling. The rents are not cheap. 
One very pleasant little " apartment," " hired " by a 
newly-married couple, was made up of three rooms, 
a kitchen and a balcony. It was in the suburbs. 
The rent was thirty-five dollars a month, say eighty- 
four pounds a year, for a flat, which, under the same 
conditions (rates included) could be obtained for 
thirty-five pounds a year in England in pre-war days. 
For this, however, central heating and perpetual hot 
water are included. My friend told me that his 
electric light bill came to three dollars a month, and 



260 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

— — — ■ — — ^ .^ ^ —— — ^ ——**** * 

his gas bill (for cooking) to rather less than that. 
In Calgary a friend of mine had a pretty " apart- 
ment " even smaller in a suburban district, was pay- 
ing about ninety-six pounds a year over all, i.e., rent, 
light and gas (central heating being included). 
Most of these " apartments " have an ice house 
(refrigerator) attached, blocks of ice being left on 
the doorstep every morning, just as the milk is left. 

Winnipeg is an attractive town to live in. It has 
plenty of amusements, including several good thea- 
tres and music halls — fed, of course, mainly from 
American sources. Mrs. Walker, whose husband 
owns the Walker Theatre, told me that Laurence 
Irving and his wife acted on their stage just before 
sailing on the ill-fated Empress of Ireland. She 
went up to his dressing-room to say " Good-bye " to 
him, the night before he left, and in answer to her 
knock he suddenly appeared before her, dressed in 
black from head to foot, for the character he was 
playing that night. His appearance filled her with 
dread — it seemed to her, as she looked at him, that 
something terrible was to happen. Both Laurence 
Irving and his wife were, however, in excellent 
spirits. Canada treated them royally, and they 
were going back home full of optimism, confident 
that the play that Laurence Irving was then finishing 
— one dealing with Napoleon — was to prove the 
greatest success of their careers. 

We met at Winnipeg, also, a number of the bril- 
liant men and women journalists whose energy and 
brains are responsible for the many fine papers that 
focus in this city. We had met such companions of 



The Prairies Again 261 

our own dispensation in other cities, in Ottawa, Van- 
couver, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec. They were 
not merely keen and accomplished craftsmen, but 
their hospitality to us was always of the most de- 
lightful generosity. 

The Prince's visit to Winnipeg was undertaken to 
give him the opportunity of saying an revoir to the 
West. At the vivid luncheon he gave in the attrac- 
tive Alexandra Hotel to all the leaders of the West, 
men and women, he insisted that it was au revoir, 
and that so well had the West treated him, so at- 
tractive was its atmosphere, that he meant not merely 
to return, but to become something of a rancher here 
in the " little place " he had bought in Alberta. He 
spoke of the splendid spirit of the West, and the 
magnificent future that was the West's for the grasp- 
ing, and he left on all those who heard him an im- 
pression of genuine affection for the people and the 
land with which his journey had brought him in con- 
tact. 

He himself left the West a " real scout." It is a 
mere truism to say that his personality had con- 
quered the West, as it had won for him affection 
everywhere. His straightforward masculinity and 
his entire lack of side, his cheerfulness and his keen- 
ness, his freedom from " frills," as one man put it, 
had made him the friend of everybody. I heard 
practically the same expressions of real affection 
from all grades, from Chief Justice to car conductors. 
I heard, I think, but one man pooh-pooh, not so 
much this universal regard for the Prince, as a uni- 
versal enthusiasm for something royal. A labour- 



262 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

leader, who happened to be present, administered 
correction : 

" That chap's all right," he insisted, and his word 
carried weight. " I saw him in France, and there's 
not much that is wrong with him. If you're as demo- 
cratic as he is, then you're all right." 

The brightest of dances, a game of squash rackets, 
and the Prince left, undaunted by the snow, for 
week-end shooting. On Tuesday, October 14th, he 
was in the train again, travelling East, in the direc- 
tion of the Cobalt mining country, buoyed up by the 
prophecy of the local weather-wise that the cold snap 
would not endure, but would be followed by the de- 
lightfully keen yet warm weather of the " Indian 
Summer." The local weather-wise were right, but 
it took time. 



CHAPTER XX 



SILVER, GOLD AND COMMERCE 



COBALT is a fantasy town. It is a Rackham 
drawing with all its little grey houses 
perched up on queer shelves and masses of 
greeny-grey rock. Its streets are whimsical. They 
wander up and down levels, and in and out of houses, 
and sometimes they are roads and sometimes they 
are stairs. One glance at them and I began to re- 
peat, " There was a crooked man, who walked a 
crooked mile." A delightful genius had done the 
town to illustrate that rhyme. 

And the rope railways that sent a procession of 
emotionless buckets across the train when we pulled 
in, the greeny-grey lake that presently (inside the 
town) ceased being a lake and became a big lake 
basin of smooth, greeny-grey mine slime, the vast 
greeny-grey mounds of mill refuse, the fantastic 
spideriness of the lattice mill workings, and humped 
corrugated iron sheds, all of them slightly greeny- 
grey in the prevailing fashion — the whole picture 
was fantastic; indeed, Cobalt appears a city of 
gnomes. 

We had travelled all Tuesday and Wednesday, 
striking east from Winnipeg, only stopping occasion- 
ally for the Prince to return the courtesies of the 

263 



264 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

crowds that had collected at wayside stations, and, 
on one occasion, to allow the Prince to obtain a walk. 
At North Bay we had left the C.P.R. main line, and 
pushed up the road of the Timiskaming Railway 
towards the silver mining town of Cobalt and the 
gold mining town of Timmins. 

During the night and morning of Thursday, Oc- 
tober 1 6th, we had pushed up through a rocky and 
inhospitable country, where many lakes lie coldly 
amid stony hillocks that thrust up through live green 
spruce, or the white ghosts of spruce murdered by 
fires. 

It seems a country fore-ordained to loneliness, and 
it is hard to believe that a rich town has arisen in it. 
As a matter of truth, that town would not have been 
born to it but for an accident. Cobalt was not 
dreamed of as a city. The intention of the railway 
engineers had been to drive a line through this land 
to open up good farming country to the north of 
Cobalt Lake. Only this accident brought Cobalt 
into being at all. 

Two bored contractors employed on the construc- 
tion of the railways are responsible for it. They 
were filling out an idle hour in throwing pebbles into 
the lake ; one of them noticed that the pebbles had a 
queer texture. Both men examined them, for many 
of the kind were scattered about. 

" Lead," decided one of the men, but the other 
gave his opinion for silver. He had the strange 
pebble analysed, and silver it was. On the wave of 
excitement that followed, Cobalt was born. 

As the Prince saw it on October 16th it was ob- 



Silver, Gold and Commerce 265 

viously a mining town, careless of how it built itself 
as long as it could get at the rich stopes, or veins, that 
burrow amid the calcite rock of the district. It is 
this indifference to planning that makes the town fan- 
tastic, though there is something of the fantastic in 
the character of its people and the welcome they 
gave. 

Above the heads of the very generous and homely 
throng that welcomed the Prince, the streets were 
strung from side to side with banners of welcome, 
many of them touched with native humour. 

" GLAD U COME " 

declared one, while another offered the " glad hand " 
with the injunction: 

" THE TOWN IS YOURS: PAINT IT RED OR 
ANY OLD COLOUR YOU LIKE " 

After a corrugated drive along the switchback 
streets, the miners had their own individual welcome 
for him. At the Coniagas Mine these stocky men, 
in brown overalls, the acetylene lamps that lighted 
them through the underworld still alight on the front 
of their hats, were gathered about the pit-head work- 
ings, and they gave him a particular cheer. 

The Prince was shown through the whole of the 
above-ground workings in this mine. He went into 
the breaking and stamping rooms, where he could 
not hear himself speak for the crashings of the mills 
that broke up the quartz; he saw the machines that 



266 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

washed the silver free from the living rock by jigging 
it over metal shelves across which flowed a constant 
film of water; he saw the pulverized slime being 
treated with oil and pouring bubbling from big vats 
through wooden chutes. 

He climbed to the top of one of the big mounds of 
dried slime that pile up round the workings. In the 
old days these mounds were rubbish for which man 
had no use. Now science has stepped in, and this 
rubbish is being treated once more, and from four 
to six ounces of silver per ton are being reclaimed. 
A big mechanical shovel, working on an overhead 
cable, was dropping and digging into this dump; it 
lifted itself full and moved along the rope until it 
dropped its load into a chute. No man went near it : 
a super-fellow at the levers of a donkey-engine main- 
tained a control. 

The mine gave him a little memento in silver, and 
very prettily. Two delightful little girls came out 
of a mass of miners, and handed him a small brick 
of solid silver inscribed to commemorate the visit. 
The brick weighed thirty-five ounces. 

In a short while the Prince was in the place where 
the brick was smelted. This was in a small house 
containing several furnaces built to the level of a 
man's breast. They are not large furnaces, but 
when their doors are opened one can look on to an 
incandescent pool of liquid silver that the gas or oil 
flames have melted. The Prince watched the pro- 
cess of casting bricks with interest, questioning the 
two demobilized soldiers who worked a big ladle 
with the close curiosity he had shown over every de- 



Stiver, Gold and Commerce 267 



tail of the milling. Dipping the long-handled ladle 
into the shining pool, the soldiers swung it out, and 
poured the spitting and sparkling contents into a 
metal mould, in which the silver brick was formed. 
In this small room is smelted all the metal of one of 
the richest mining towns in the world. 

From here the cars went adventurously along the 
steep and spiral roads, and amid the tall corrugated 
iron towers and buildings that form the many mine 
workings. The Prince passed round the bases of 
great grey slack and slime heaps of old and dis- 
carded workings that have been worth millions of 
dollars in their day, but, after the fickle way of silver 
veins, have now given out. Through this harsh and 
grey country he drove until he came to the O'Brien 
mine, where he was to try the adventure of a descent. 

The descent into a mine needs armour, and the 
Prince buckled on rubber overshoes, an oilskin coat 
and a sou'wester hat. Garbed thus, and with an 
acetylene lamp in his hand, he was the natural prey 
of photographers, who refused to spare him until 
he escaped into the cage and baffled them by going 
underground. 

Cobalt, which had been cheering the Prince at 
every available spot, can boast that she also man- 
aged to do it in the bowels of the earth. Descending 
three hundred feet, His Royal Highness walked 
some distance through the dark tunnel of the work- 
ings, and in each gallery the ghostly figures of miners 
gave him a subterranean cheer. At the end of this 
walk he went down another three hundred feet, to 
where a new stope was being started. This was his 



268 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

own particular vein, for it had already been chris- 
tened " The Prince of Wales Stope " in his honour 
— no mean compliment, for it is anticipated that it 
will yield at least a million dollars. 

The Prince showed a natural interest in this seam, 
and in the methods of working it, and he also took, 
as it were, a sponsor's fee, for he worked a piece of 
rock from the vein with hrs fingers and carried it 
away as a memento. 

Beyond Cobalt the land becomes greener and 
more hospitable, and it opens up into great ranges of 
good farms, and this state of things continues until, 
along a branch line, the sprawling and great gold- 
mining centres of Timmins threw their bleak melan- 
choly over the land. 

In Timmins itself can be seen a Canadian town at 
birth. Its wooden shack houses and brick buildings 
are only now being brought to order along its streets. 
Its roads are still ankle-deep in mud; buckboards and 
other country rigs are, with motors, the means of 
transport — it only wanted Douglas Fairbanks in a 
Western get-up to complete it as a town projected 
into reality from the " movies." It is a one-man 
town, and bears the name of the pioneer who brought 
it into being, and who is still the driving force of the 
great gold mines that make it one of the richest 
places on the earth. He is a quiet man, whose force 
of character is concealed behind gold-rimmed spec- 
tacles and a rooted instinct against waste of words. 

The Prince spent an interesting hour at his mines, 
which are among the largest, if they are not the 
largest, of their kind in the Empire; all the processes 



Silver, Gold and Commerce 269 

were explained to him, though he did not go into the 
workings as he did at Cobalt. He had, it goes with- 
out saying, a royal reception here, which, in the 
hands of the liveliest of mayors, had more than a 
tinge of humour in it. 

Timmins was the Prince's last adventure in the 
wild's. Steaming south and west along the Grand 
Trunk Railway, he passed through the delightful 
holiday scenery of the Muskoka Lakes, and, in coun- 
try becoming gradually more and more domestic and 
British, approached Hamilton and the thickly in- 
habited areas of Western Ontario. 



H 

In coming to Hamilton the Prince returned to the 
regions of big welcomes. It was not that the East 
was more loyal or warm than the West, but that, 
grouped in the vast area of Canada lying between the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, are the 
old and teeming industrial centres of the Dominion. 
In this area is about seventy per cent, of Canada's 
population, and men, women and children can pack 
themselves into the streets by the tens of thousands, 
be those streets ever so many or ever so long. 

This was Hamilton's way. Hamilton is a " Get 
on or Get out " proposition. It is dubbed not 
merely " the Birmingham of Canada," but also " the 
Ambitious City." It is not the largest town in the 
Dominion, but it asks you to reserve judgment as to 
that, and meanwhile it lets you know that it is one of 
the richest. 



270 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

From the abrupt heights that rise behind it, one 
looks down, not upon an historic panorama, as at 
Quebec, but a Brangwyn panel of " modern pro- 
gress." Between the abrupt hills and the waters of 
Lake Ontario the city is packed tight on a rising 
strip of plain. The stacks of many industries, the 
rigid uplift of square, practical factories, the fret of 
derricks and patent loaders by the waterside, all seen 
under smudges and scarves of factory smoke, would 
give it an air of resolute drabness if it were not for 
its multitude of trees. 

Trees there are in profusion, rising up between 
the stiff walls of commercial buildings, lining the 
long, straight avenues that look like bands of grey- 
ish water from the heights, and grouping about the 
comely houses that form the residential quarters on 
the slopes rising towards the onlooker on The Moun- 
tain. But, even in spite of the trees and the blue 
shine of the distant lake, there is an atmosphere of 
industrial greyness that differentiates it from other 
cities. 

There was an air of industrialism about the 
packed welcome Hamilton gave the Prince. He 
had slipped into the city on the afternoon of Friday, 
October 17th, but not officially. He was merely to 
attend the invisible pleasures of golf and dancing. 
On Saturday he entered Hamilton ceremoniously, 
officially. He drove down in a car to a siding, 
entered the train, was backed into the station, and 
alighted from it and entered the car he had just 
left. The church bells rang " Oh, Canada," and 
he had " arrived." 



Silver, Gold and Commerce 271 

The industrial atmosphere was created by the 
workers who thronged the narrow business streets 
in their overalls, having obviously come out from 
bench and ironworks and packing factories, as well 
as from the stores and offices, to see the Prince. I 
noticed among the crowd a great number of Jews, 
more than I had seen in other Canadian cities. 

Yet, if Hamilton was industrial, it also knew how 
to meet a Prince. Its streets were delightfully dec- 
orated, and in the general scheme of bunting the 
authorities had hung over the roads in pairs, small 
square banners of the victory medal ribbon, so that 
the Prince passed under this sign of triumph al- 
ways. Swaying high up in the trees, just coming into 
the autumn gold of foliage, this scheme of decora- 
tion made a most effective showing. 

Part of the Prince's ride through the town was 
along James Street, that sweeps in a single straight 
line from The Mountain to the shore of the lake. 
All manner of citizens were crowded in this sump- 
tuous boulevard and in the pretty streets that ran 
through the pleasant home centres. Now the cars 
passed through packed ranks of children ranged ac- 
cording to schools, and all torn between the purely 
human desire of shouting their heads off and the 
duty of singing, " God bless the Prince of Wales," 
the result being an eerie noise that left no doubt 
about the quality of the enthusiasm. When there 
were no children there were grown-ups, gathered 
everywhere, perched everywhere and anywhere in 
their determination to get a good view. On one 
low bungalow was a family group, mother, father, 



272 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

children and baby-in-arms, sitting perilous but 
serenely content on the very ridge-pole of the roof. 
From a group of houses in the same suave street 
had come many men, matrons and maidens, waving 
the green flag of the harp, all fiercely insistent on 
the rights of Ireland to cheer and show enthusiasm. 

So the Prince came to a great, comely semi-Gothic 
hall with a million children round it (that was the 
effect, though Hamilton hasn't half a million in- 
habitants), and I don't know how many in it. This 
hall was a chamber of children, a forcing-house of 
delightful infants. Under the broad, mellow light 
that beat down from the great windows in the roof 
all the prettiest kiddies in the world seemed to be 
set in banks of cultivation. Children were in mass 
round the walls. Children stretched upward in a 
square of galleries. Children flowered everywhere 
— only a fillet of walking-space was clear, where a 
desperate gardener had clipped a passage-way for 
the Prince, it seemed. 

And they were such vivacious children. They 
cheered. They sang lilting part-songs, each great 
bank of infancy taking up the melody until the hall 
was all tune, and the walls seemed to be pressed 
back by the fine soaring sweetness of the fugue. 
And when they had sung they burst into the sudden 
and amazing sparkle of their school yell, " Hamil- 
ton ! Hamilton ! Hamilton ! " and then diffused 
their fervour in a swinging burst of cheers. 

And Canadians, children or adults, can cheer. 
Hands and flags and hats and body join in, to give 
an impression both passionate and irresistible. And 



Silver, Gold and Commerce 273 

before this storm the Prince could only laugh and 
wave back with something of the children's aban- 
don, and so delighted did he seem that one of the 
Canadians who watched him had every right to cry 
out: 

" Say — say — isn't he just tickled to death? " 

Through the streets in his ride to The Mountain 
this wave of cheering followed him, and, quick to 
respond, the Prince was once more on his feet in his 
car and waving gladly back to the crowds on the 
sidewalk. So ardently did he do this, that a little 
girl who had watched him coming and who watched 
his passing, turned to her mother and cried: 

" Poor hand." 

It was certainly a strenuously used hand, but its 
endurance had limits, and, as he was forced to trans- 
fer the office of hand-shaking to the left, so he fre- 
quently had to use the left for waving on these long 
rides, and give the right a rest. 

On The Mountain, the tall buttress that curves 
behind the town, the Prince drove through avenues 
of fine homes to the Hamilton Memorial Hospital, 
a magnificent tribute to those men of the city who 
gave their lives in the war. It is, of course, thor- 
oughly up-to-date in appointments, but it is more 
than that : it is a poignant link with the brave dead, 
for every ward has been dedicated to a brave son 
of Hamilton who died overseas, and a brass plate in 
each ward records the heroic name. 

At this hospital the Prince was received by a 
Welsh choir, many of the lasses dressed in the tall 
hats and native laces and fabrics of Wales, and, so 



274 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

that nobody should make mistakes about them, each 
(men and women) wore a fresh leek at the breast. 

The Prince also visited the Sanatorium on the 
heights, and drove out to the Club, where he lunched, 
and, on the whole, filled a day with all the bustle that 
Hamilton knows well how to put into events. It 
was only at night that he was free to leave this 
vigorous town, and start for the restful beauties of 
Niagara. 



CHAPTER XXI 

NIAGARA AND THE TOWNS OF WESTERN ONTARIO 

I 

THE best first impression of Niagara Falls is, 
I think, the one the Prince of Wales ob- 
tained. 

Those who really wish to experience the thrills 
of grandeur and poetry of this marvel had better 
delay their visit until a night in summer, and make 
arrangements with the railway time-table to get there 
somewhere after dark. Upon arriving they must 
hire a car, and drive down to the splendid boulevard 
on the Canadian side. They will then see the great 
mass of water under the shine of lights, falling 
eternally, eternally presenting a picture of almost 
cruel beauty. They will then know an experience 
that transcends all other experiences as well as all at- 
tempts at description. 

The curious feeling of disappointment which 
comes to many in daylight will have been guarded 
against, and, stimulated by that wondrous first 
vision, they will tide over that spiritually barren 
period which many know until the marvel of the 
Falls begins to " grow on them." 

The Prince came from Hamilton to Niagara 
somewhere very close to midnight on Saturday, the 
1 8th. He was carried through the dark town and 

275 



276 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

country to the house of one of the Falls Commis- 
sioners. From here, through a filigree of trees and 
leaves, he could look across the smoking gorge to 
the Falls on the American side. Batteries of great 
arc lights, focused and hidden cunningly, shone upon 
the curtain of white and tumbling waters, and upon 
the strong, black mass of Goat Island, that is perched 
like a diver eternally hesitant on the very brink of 
the two-hundred-foot plunge. 

The ghostly beauty of the falling water through 
the light, now a solid" and tremendous curve, now 
broken into filaments and zigzag whorls, now veiled 
by the upward drift of the gossamer spray, held the 
Prince's gaze for some time. But even that beauty 
was transcended. He himself pressed an electric 
switch, and the grand curve of the Canadian Horse- 
shoe blazed fully alight for the first time in their his- 
tory, and though from this position this could not be 
fully seen, this new addition of light gave the whole 
mass before his eyes an additional loveliness. 

From this point the Prince motored through the 
town to the splendid wide promenade that borders 
the Canadian side of the gorge, and spent half an 
hour watching the fascinating play of falling water 
and spray in the narrow cauldron of the Horseshoe. 

He stood a foot away from the point where the 
water leaps in its magnificent and enigmatic curve 
into the tortured pool below. Green at the curve, 
the water is a mass of curdled white in the strong 
lights as it falls. Beneath, the face of the water is 
a passionate surface of whirlpools and eddies and 
tossing whiteness. From the tremendous impact of 



The Towns of Western Ontario 277 

the drop a column of spray shoots and curls high up 
in the air. It towers quite six hundred feet above 
the surface of the water, and it is hard to believe 
that enduring mass of spray comes from the fall; in 
the distance one is convinced that it is steam arising 
from some big factory. 

On the next day (Sunday) the Prince saw the 
Falls in their every phase. He walked up-stream 
above the Horseshoe to where the Niagara River 
jostles down over a series of ledges in the grand and 
angry Canadian Rapids, a sight as tumultuous and 
as thrilling in its own fashion as the Falls themselves. 
He visited the big, white stone power-house to 
examine with the greatest interest the machinery 
that traps the tremendous latent power of the plung- 
ing water, harnesses it, and so turns the wheels of a 
thousand industries, and lights hundreds of towns. 

Partly walking, partly riding in a car of the scenic 
tramway, he followed the line of the Falls and river 
downward to where the Whirlpool Rapids curdle 
and eddy within the deep walls of the gorge. Over 
on the American side he saw the castles and keeps 
of modern industry: power-houses and factories, 
springing up from the very rock of the cliff, and al- 
most forming part of it. On the Canadian side the 
people have not let their utilitarian sense run away 
with them to such an extent. Where America edges 
the gorge with commercial buildings, Canada has 
constructed her beautiful promenade, which con- 
tinues the comeliness of the Falls Park through a 
pretty residential district. America has Prospect 
Park and the very beautiful Goat Island Park on its 



278 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

side, but these are not extended along the gorge. 

Below the Whirlpool Rapids the Prince descended 
to the level of the river; later, he came to the top 
of the gorge again, and crossed, swinging two hun- 
dred feet above the water on the spidery ropes of the 
aerial railways, the great pool at the end of the 
river canyon, into which the pent-up water pushes 
swirling before turning at right angles towards Lake 
Ontario. 

The Prince did not go over to the American side, 
but America came to him. The white number-plates 
of New York State seemed to be everywhere on auto- 
mobiles, even outnumbering the yellow of Ontario. 
One had the impression that every American motor- 
owner within gasolene radius had decided that he 
would take his Sunday spin to Niagara Falls, and on 
to the Canadian side of the Falls to boot. 

American cars were coming over the bridges all 
day, and American owners waited cheerfully along 
the route to get a glimpse of " The Boy," as the 
American papers called the Prince. They joined 
themselves to the very friendly crowd of Canadians 
who gathered everywhere along the route, and their 
cheering, mingling with Canadian cheering, showed 
that friendliness is not an affair that frontiers can 
manipulate. 

As a matter of fact, the frontier at Niagara is 
the most imaginary of lines. Now that the war Is 
over there is no difficulty in getting to either side. 
And there is no change in atmosphere either. Peo- 
ple and conditions are much the same, only on the 
American side our dollars cost us more. 



The Towns of Western Ontario 279 

11 

Western Ontario is, in the main, the most British 
part of Canada. Its towns have British names, 
and the streets of the towns have British names, 
while their atmosphere and design are almost of the 
Home Counties. The countryside (if one overlooks 
the absence of hedges — though rows of upturned 
tree-roots with plants growing among them some- 
times have the look of hedges) is the suave, domes- 
ticated countryside of England. England is in the 
very air. And at the first of these curiously Eng- 
lish towns the Prince became an Indian chief. 

Brantford, though it reminds one of a comely 
British country town, preferably one with a Church 
influence in it, is really the capital of the Six Nation 
Indians. It actually owes its name to Joseph Brant, 
the Mohawk chief, who, having fought his Indians 
on the side of the British — as the braves of the 
fierce and powerful Six Nations had always fought 
on the side of the British — in the War of Indepen- 
dence, marched his tribes from their old camping- 
grounds in the Mohawk Valley to this place, so that 
they could remain under British rule. 

The Indians of the Six Nations still live in and 
about Brantford, for, though they have ceded away 
their lands to settlers, they are among the few of 
the aboriginal races that have thrived and not de- 
cayed under civilization. The Prince's visit to 
Brantford on Monday, October 20th, was nearly all 
a visit to the Mohawks, the leaders of the ancient 
Indian federation of six tribes. 



280 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

This is not to say that the welcome given him by 
Canadians was not a great one. As a matter of 
fact, it was astonishing, and it was difficult to 
imagine how a small town like this could pack its 
streets with so many people. But Brantford is in- 
dustrial and scientific also, as well as being Indian. 
After a strenuous reception, for instance, the Prince 
went along to the statue that shrines the town's claim 
to a place in the history of science. This was the 
memorial to Dr. Bell, who lived in Brantford and 
who invented the first telephone in Brantford. 
They will even show you the trees from which the 
first line over which the first spoken message sent, 
was strung. 

But the colourful ceremonies of Brantford were 
those connected with the Mohawks. The Prince 
was taken out to the small, old wooden chapel that 
George III. erected for his loyal Mohawk allies. 
It is the oldest Protestant chapel in the Dominion. 
On its walls are painted prayers in Mohawk, and it 
contains an old register that King Edward had signed 
in 1 86 1. The Prince added his own signature to 
this before going into the churchyard to see the grave 
of Joseph Brant. 

In the little enclosure before the church were the 
youngest descendants of the loyal Joseph Brant: 
ranks of Mohawk boys in khaki, and small Mohawk 
girls in red and grey. They sang to the Prince in 
their own language, a singular guttural tongue 
rendered with an almost abnormal stoicism. The 
children did not move a muscle of lips or face as 



The Towns of Western Ontario 281 

they chanted; it might have been a song rendered by 
graven images. 

In the main square of Brantford the Prince was 
elected chief of the Six Nations. This ceremony 
was carried out upon a raised and beflagged platform 
about which a vast throng of pale-faces gathered. 
Becoming a chief of the Six Nations is no light mat- 
ter. It is a thing that must be discussed in full with 
all ceremonies and accurate minutes. The pow-wow 
on the platform was rather long. Chiefs rose up 
and debated at leisure in the Iroquois tongue, while 
the pale-faces in the square, at first quite patient, be- 
gan to demand in loud voices: 

" We want our Prince. We want our Prince." 

And to be truthful, not merely the pale-faces found 
the ceremony lengthy. Gathered on the platform 
were a number of Mohawk girls, delicate and pretty 
maidens, with the warmth of their race's colour 
glowing through the soft texture of their cheeks. 
They were there because they had thrown flowers 
in the pathway of the Prince. At first they were 
interested in this olden ceremony of their old race. 
Then they began to talk of the wages they were 
drawing in extremely modern Canadian stores and 
factories. Then they looked at the ceremony again, 
at the clothes the Indians wore, at the romance and 
colour of it, and they said, one to another : 

" Say, why have those guys dressed up like that? 
What's it all about, anyhow? What's the use of 
this funny old business? " 

The romantic may find some food for thought in 
this attitude of the modern Mohawk maid. 



282 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

In the end, after a debate on the fitness of several 
names, the Prince, as president of the pow-wow, 
gave his vote for " Dawn of Morning," and became 
chief with that title. But apparently he did not be- 
come fully fledged until he had danced a ritual mea- 
sure. A brother chief in bright yellow and a fine 
gravity, came forward to guide the Prince's steps, 
and the Prince, immediately entering into the spirit 
of the ceremony, joined with him in shuffling and 
bowing to and fro across the platform. Only after 
the congratulations from fellow-Mohawks and pale- 
faces, did he leave the dais to fight — there is no 
other word — his way through the dense and cheer- 
ful mass that packed the square almost to danger- 
point. 

It was a splendid crowd, good-humoured and 
ardent. It had cheered every moment, though, per- 
haps, it had cheered more strongly at one moment. 
This was when am old Indian woman ran up to the 
Prince, crying: " I met your father and your grand- 
father, and I'm British too." At her words the 
Prince had taken the rose from his buttonhole and 
had presented it to her. And that delighted the 
crowd. 

ill 

The fine weather of Monday gave way to pitiless 
rain on the morning of Tuesday, October 21st. All 
the same, the rain did not prevent the reception at 
Guelph from being warm and intensely interesting. 

Guelph is one of the many comely and thriving 
towns of West Ontario, but its chiefest feature is 



The Towns of Western Ontario 283 

its great Agricultural College that trains the scien- 
tific farmer, not of Ontario and Canada alone, but 
for many countries in the Western World. This col- 
lege gave the Prince a captivating welcome. 

It has men students, but it has many attractive 
and bonny girl students, also, and these helped to 
distinguish the day, that is, with a little help from 
the " movie " men. 

The " movie " men who travelled with the train 
had captured the spectacle of the Prince's arrival 
at the station, and had driven off to the college to be 
in readiness to " shoot " when His Royal Highness 
arrived. They had ten minutes to wait. Not 
merely that, they had ten minutes to wait in the com- 
pany of a bunch of the prettiest and liveliest girl 
students in West Ontario. " Movie " men are not 
of the hesitant class. Somewhere in the first 
seventy-five seconds they became old friends of the 
students who were filling the college windows with 
so much attraction. In one minute and forty-five 
seconds they had the girls in training for the Prince's 
arrival. They had hummed over the melody of 
what they declared was the Prince's favourite opera 
selection; a girl at a piano had picked up the tune, 
while the others practised harder than diva ever did. 

When the Prince arrived the training proved 
worth while. He was saluted from a hundred laugh- 
ing heads at a score of windows with the song that 
had followed him all over Canada. He drove into 
the College, not to the stirring strains of " Oh, 
Canada," but to the syncopated lilt of " Johnny's 
in Town." 



284 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

The Prince was not altogether out of the youthful 
gaiety of the scene, for after the lunch, where the 
students had scrambled for souvenirs, a piece of 
sugar from his coffee cup, a stick of celery from his 
plate, even a piece of his pie, he made all these dash- 
ing young women gather about him in the group 
that was to make the commemorative photo, and a 
very jolly, laughing group it was. 

And when he was about to leave, and in answer to 
a massed feminine chorus, this time chanting: 

" We — want — a — holiday." 

He called out cheerfully: 

11 All right. . I'll fix that holiday." And he did. 



IV 

The whole of these days were filled with flittings 
hither and thither on the Grand Trunk line (the 
passage of the Prince being smoothly manipulated 
by another of Canada's line railway men, and a 
genius in good fellowship, Mr. H. R. Charlton), 
as the Prince called at the pretty and vigorous 
towns on the tongue of Ontario that stretches be- 
tween Lake Huron and Lake Erie to the American 
border. 

Stratford, with something of the comely grace of 
Shakespeare's town in its avenues of neat homes and 
fine trees, gave him as warm a reception as any- 
where in Canada on the evening of October 21st. 
On Wednesday, October 22nd, the same hearty wel- 
come was extended by those singularly English 
towns, Woodstock and Chatham. 



The Towns of Western Ontario 285 

On the afternoon of the same day London gave 
him a mass welcome mainly of children in its big 
central park. London, Ontario, is an echo of Lon- 
don, Thames. It has its Blackfriars and Regent 
Street, its Piccadilly and St. James'. It is indus- 
trial and crowded, as the English London is. Its 
public reception to the Prince was remarkable. It 
had managed it rather well. It had stated that all 
who wished to be present must apply for tickets of 
admission. Thousands did, and they passed before 
the Prince in a motley and genial crowd of top hats 
and gingham skirts, striped sweaters and satin 
charmeuse. But though they came in thousands, the 
numbers of ticket-holders were ultimately ex- 
hausted. When the last one had passed, the Prince 
looked at his wrist watch. There was half an hour 
to spare before the reception was due to close. He 
told those about him to open the doors of the build- 
ing and let the unticketed public in. 

From London the Grand Trunk carried us to 
Windsor on Thursday, October 23rd, where crowds 
were so dense about the station that they over- 
flowed on to the engine until one could no longer see 
it for humanity and little boys. From the engine 
eager sightseers even scrambled along the tops of 
the great steel cars until they became veritable 
grandstands. 

Crowds were in the virile streets, and they were 
not all Canadians either. A ferry plies from Wind- 
sor to the United States, and America, which at no 
time lost an opportunity of coming across the bor- 
der to see the Prince, had come across in great num- 



286 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

bers. Canadians there were in Windsor, thousands 
of them, but quite a fair volume of the cheering had 
a United States timbre. 

A city with an electric fervour, Windsor. That 
comes not merely from the towering profile of De- 
troit's skyscrapers seen across the river, but from 
the spirit of Windsor itself. Detroit is America's 
" motoropolis," and from the air of it Windsor wilL 
be Canada's motoropolis of tomorrow. It is al- 
ready thrusting its way up to the first line of indus- 
trial cities; it is already a centre for the manufac- 
ture of the ubiquitous Ford car and others, and it 
is learning and profiting a lot from its American 
brother. 

The Canadian and American populations are, in 
a sense, interchangeable. The United States comes 
across to work in Windsor, and Windsor goes across 
to work in America. The ferry, not a very bustling 
ferry, not such a good ferry, for example, as that 
which crosses the English Thames at Woolwich, car- 
ries men and women and carts, and, inevitably, auto- 
mobiles between the two cities. 

Detroit took a great interest in the Prince. It 
sent a skirmishing line of newspapermen up the rail- 
way to meet him, and they travelled in the train 
with us, and failed, as all pressmen did, to get in- 
terviews with him. We certainly took an interest 
in Detroit. It was not merely the sense-capturing 
profile of Detroit, the sky-scrapers that give such a 
sense of soaring zest by day, and look like fairy 
castles hung in the air at night, but the quick, vivid 
spirit of the city that intrigued us. 



The Towns of Western Ontario 287 

We went across to visit it the next morning, and 
found it had the delight of a new sensation. It is a 
city with a sparkle. It is a city where the automo- 
bile is a commonplace, and the horse a thing for 
pause and comment. It contained a hundred points 
of novelty for us, from the whiteness of its build- 
ings, the beauty of its domestic architecture, the up- 
to-date advertising of its churches, to its policemen 
on traffic duty who, on a rostrum and under an 
umbrella, commanded the traffic with a sign-board 
on which was written the laconic commands, " Go " 
and " Stop." 

And, naturally, we visited the Ford Works. A 
place where I found the efficiency of effort almost 
frighteningly uncanny. One of these days those in- 
humanly human machines will bridge the faint gulf 
that separates them from actual life, then, like Frank- 
enstein's monster, they will turn upon their creators. 

Gait (Friday, October 24th) gave the Prince an- 
other great reception; then, passing through 
Toronto, he travelled to Kingston, which he 
reached on Saturday, October 25th. 

Kingston, though it had its beginnings in the old 
stone fort that Frontenac built on the margin of 
Lake Ontario to hold in check the English settlers 
in New York and their Iroquois allies, is unmis- 
takably British. With its solid stone buildings, its 
narrow fillet of blue lake, its stone fortifications on 
the foreshore, and its rambling streets, it reminded 
me of Southampton town, especially before South- 
ampton's Western Shore was built over. Its air of 
being a British seaport arises from the fact that it 



288 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

is a British port, for it was actually the arsenal and 
yard for the naval forces on the Great Lakes during 
the war of 1812. 

And it also gets its English tone from the Royal 
Military College which exists here. The bravest 
function of the Prince's visit was in this college, 
where he presented colours to the cadets and saw 
them drill. The discipline of these boys on parade 
is worthy of Sandhurst, Woolwich or West Point, 
and their physique is equal to, if not better, than 
any shown at those places. It is not exactly a mili- 
tary school, though the training is military, for 
though some of the cadets join Imperial or Cana- 
dian forces, and all serve for a time in the Canadian 
Militia, practically all the boys join professions or 
go into commerce after passing through. 

The Prince's reception at the college was fine, 
but his reception in the town itself was remarkable. 
The Public Park was black with people at the 
ceremony of welcome, and though he was down to 
" kick off " in the first of the Association League 
football matches, his kick off was actually a toss-up. 
That was the only way to get the ball moving in the 
dense throng that surged between the goal posts. 

Kingston, too, gave the Prince the degree of Doc- 
tor of Laws. It is a proud honour, for Kingston 
boasts of being one of the oldest universities in 
Canada. But though its tradition is old, its spirit is 
modern enough; for its Chancellor is Mr. E. W. 
Beatty, the President of the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
ways. It was from the Railway President-Chan- 
cellor the Prince received his degree. 



CHAPTER XXII 

MONTREAL 



THE Prince had had a brief but lively ex- 
perience of Montreal earlier in his tour. 
It was but a hint of what was to happen 
when he returned on Monday, October 27th. It was 
not merely that Montreal as the biggest and richest 
city in Canada had set itself the task of winding up 
the trip in befitting manner; there was that about 
the quality of its entertainment which made it both 
startling and charming. 

Even before the train reached Windsor Station 
the Prince was receiving a welcome from all the 
smaller towns that make up outlying Montreal. At 
these places the habitant Frenchmen and women 
crowded about the observation platform of the train 
to cry their friendliness in French, where English 
was unknown. And the friendliness was not all on 
the side of the habitants. 

" They tole me," said one old habitant in work- 
ingman overalls, " they tole me I could not shake 
'is han'. So I walk t'ro' them, Oui. An 'e see me. 
A' 'e put out 'is 'an', an' 'e laf — so. I tell you 
'e's a real feller, de kin' that shake han' wis men lak 
me." 

Montreal itself met the Prince in a maze of con- 
fetti and snow. Montreal was showing its essential 



290 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

self by a happy accident. It was the Montreal of old 
France, gay and vivacious and full of colour mated 
to the stern stuff of .Canada. 

It is true there was not very much snow, merely 
a fleck of it in the air, that starred the wind-screens 
of the long line of automobiles that formed the pro- 
cession; but Canada and Montreal are not all snow, 
either. It was as though the native spirit of the 
place was impressing upon us the feeling that un- 
derneath the gaiety we were encountering there was 
all the sternness of the pioneers that had made this 
fine town the splendid place it is. 

There was certainly gaiety in the air on that day. 
The Prince drove out from the station into a city 
of cheering. Mighty crowds were about the sta- 
tion. Mighty crowds lined the great squares and 
the long streets through which he rode, and crowds 
filled the windows of sky-climbing stores. It was an 
animated crowd. It expressed itself with the un- 
aided throat, as well as on whistles and with eerie 
noises on striped paper horns. It used rattles and 
it used sirens. 

And mere noise being not enough, it loosed its 
confetti. As the Prince drove through the narrow 
canyon of the business streets, confetti was tossed 
down from high windows by the bagful. Streamers 
of all colours shot down from buildings and up from 
the sidewalks, until the snakes of vivid colour, 
skimming and uncoiling across the street, made a 
bright lattice over flagpole and telephone wire, a«nd, 
with the bright flutter of the flags, gave the whole 
proceedings a vivid and carnival air. 






Montreal 291 



Strips of coloured paper and torn letter headings 
fluttered down, too, and in such masses that those 
who were responsible must have got rid of them by 
the shovelful. Prince and car were very quickly en- 
tangled in fluttering strips and bright streamers, 
that snapped and fluttered like the multi-tinted tails 
of comets behind him as he sped. 

There was an air of cheery abandon about this 
whole-hearted friendliness. The crowd was bright 
and vivacious. There was laughter and gaiety 
everywhere, and when the Prince turned a corner, 
it lifted its skirts and with fresh laughter raced 
across squares and along side streets in order to get 
another glimpse of this " real feller." 

Bands of students, Frenchmen from Laval in vel- 
vet berets, and English from McGill, made the side- 
walks lively. When they could, they rushed the 
cars of the procession and rode in thick masses on 
the footboards in order to keep up with the Royal 
progress. When policemen drove them off foot- 
boards, they waited for the next car to come along 
and got on to the footboards of that. 

When the Prince went into the City Hall they 
tried to take the City Hall by storm, and succeeded, 
indeed, in clambering on to all those places where 
human beings should not go, and from there they 
sang to the vast crowd waiting for the exit of the 
Prince, choosing any old tune from " Oh, Canada/' 
in French, to " Johnny's in Town," in polyglot. 

It was a great reception, a reception with electric- 
ity in it. A reception where France added a colour 
and a charm to Britain and made it irresistible. 



292 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

11 

And it was only a sample, that reception. 

Tuesday, October 28th, as a day, was tremen- 
dous. For the Prince it began at lunch, but a lunch 
of great brilliance. At the handsome Place Viger 
Hotel he was again the centre of crowds. Crowds 
waited in the streets, in spite of the greyness, 
the damp and the cold. Crowds filled the lobbies 
and galleries of the hotel to cheer him as he 
came. 

In the great dining-room was a great crowd, a 
crowd that seemed to be growing out of a wilder- 
ness of flowers. There was an amazing profusion 
and beauty of flowers all through that room. And 
not merely were there flowers for decoration, but 
with a graceful touch the Mayor and the City 
Fathers, who gave that lunch, had set a perfect 
carnation at the plate of every guest as a favour 
for his buttonhole. 

The gathering was as vivid as its setting. Gallic 
beards wagged amiably in answer to clean-shaven 
British lips. The soutane and amethyst cross sat 
next the Anglican apron and gaiters, and the khaki 
of two tongues had war experiences on one front 
translated by an interpreter. 

It was an eager gathering that crowded forward 
from angles of the room or stood up on its seats in 
order to catch every word the Prince uttered, and it 
could not cheer warmly enough when he spoke with 
real feeling of the mutual respect that was the basis 
of the real understanding between the French-speak- 



Montreal 293 



ing and the English-speaking sections of the Cana- 
dian natron. 

The reality of that mutual respect was borne out 
by the throngs that gathered in the streets when the 
Prince left the hotel. It was through a mere alley 
in humanity that his car drove to La Fontaine Park, 
and at the park there was an astonishing gather- 
ing. 

In the centre of the grass were several thousand 
veteran soldiers who had served in the war. They 
were of all arms, from Highlanders to Flying Men, 
and, ranked in battalions behind their laurel- 
wreathed standards, they made a magnificent show- 
ing. Masses of wounded soldiers in automobiles 
filled one side of the great square, humanity of both 
sexes overflowed the other three sides. Ordinary 
methods of control were hopeless. The throng of 
people simply submerged all signs of authority and 
invaded the parade ground until on half of it it was 
impossible to distinguish khaki in ranks from men 
and women and children sightseers in chaos. 

In the face of this crowd Montreal had to invent a 
new method of authority. The mounted men hav- 
ing failed to press the spectators back, tanks were 
loosed. . . . Oh, not the grim, steel Tanks of the 
war zone, but the frail and mobile Tanks of civiliza- 
tion — motor-cycles. The motor-cycle police were 
sent against the throng. The cycles, with their 
side-cars, swept down on the mass, charging cleverly 
until the speeding wheels seemed about to drive into 
civilian suitings. Under this novel method of round- 
ing up, the thick wedges of people were broken up; 



294 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

they yielded and were gradually driven back to 
proper position. 

Again the throngs in the park were only hints of 
what the Prince was to expect in his drive through 
the town. Leaving the grounds and turning into the 
long, straight and broad Sherbrooke Street, the bon- 
net of his automobile immediately lodged in the 
thickets of crowds. The splendid avenue was not 
big enough for the throngs it contained, and the peo- 
ple filled the pavements and spread right across the 
roadway. 

Slowly, and only by forcing a way with the bonnet 
of the automobile, could the police drive a lane 
through the cheerful mass. The ride was checked 
down to a crawl, and as he neared his destination, 
the Art Gallery, progress became a matter of inches 
at a time only. It was a mighty crowd. It was not 
unruly or stubborn; it checked the Prince's progress 
simply because men and women conform to ordinary 
laws of space, and it was physically impossible to 
squeeze back thirty ranks into a space that could 
contain twenty only. 

I suppose I should have written physically un- 
comfortable, for actually a narrow strip, the width 
of a car only, was driven through the throng. The 
people were jammed so tightly back that when the 
line of cars stopped, as it frequently had to, the 
people clambered on to the footboards for re- 
lief. 

In front of the classic portico of the Art Gallery 
the scene was amazing. The broad street was a sea 
of heads. Before this wedge of people the Prince's 



Montreal 295 



ca& was stopped dead. Here the point of impossi- 
bility appeared to have been reached, for though he 
was to alight, there was no place for alighting, and 
even very little space for opening the door of the 
car. It was only by fighting that the police got him 
on to the pavement and up the steps of the gallery, 
and though the crowd was extraordinarily good- 
tempered, the scuffling was not altogether painless, 
for in that heaving mass clothes were torn and shins 
were barked in the struggle. 

The Prince was to stand at the top of the steps of 
the Art Gallery to take the salute of the soldiers he 
had reviewed in La Fontaine Park, as they swung 
past in a Victory March. He stood there for over 
an hour waiting for them. The head of the column 
had started immediately after he had, but it found 
the difficulties of progress even more apparent than 
the Prince. The long column, with the trophies of 
captured guns and machines of war, could only press 
forward by fits and starts. At one time it seemed 
impossible that the veterans would ever get through 
the pack of citizens, and word was given that the 
march had been postponed. But by slow degrees 
the column forced a way to the Art Gallery, and 
gave the Prince the salute amid enthusiasm that must 
remain memorable even in Montreal's long history 
of splendid memories. 

in 
Montreal had set to excel itself as a host, and 
every moment of the Prince's days was brilliantly 



296 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

filled. There were vivid receptions and splendid 
dances at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the big and 
comfortable Hotel Windsor. Montreal is the 
centre of most things in Canada; in it are the head 
offices of the great railways and the great newspapers * 
and the leading financial and commercial concerns. 
The big men who control these industries are hos- 
pitable with a large gesture. In the hands of these 
men, not only the Prince, but the members of his 
entourage had a royal time. 

Personally, though I found Montreal a delightful 
city, a city of vividness and vivacity, I was, in one 
sense, not sorry to leave it, for I felt myself rapidly 
disintegrating under the kindnesses showered upon 
us. 

This kindness had its valuable experience: it 
brought us into contact with many of the men who 
are helping to mould the future of Canada. We 
met such capable minds as those who are responsible 
for the organization of such great companies as the 
Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk Railways. 
We met many of the great and brilliant newspaper 
men, such as Senator White, of the Montreal 
Gazette, who with his exceedingly able right-hand 
man, Major John Bassett, was our good friend al- 
ways and our host many times. All these men are 
undoubtedly forces in the future of Canada. We 
were able to get from them a juster estimate of 
Canada, her prospects and her potentialities, than 
we could have obtained by our unaided observation. 
And, more, we got from contact with such men as 
these an appreciation of the splendid qualities that 



Montreal 297 



make the Canadian citizen so definite a force in the 
present and future of the world. 

IV 

During his stay in Montreal the Prince was 
brought in contact with every phase of civic life. 
On Wednesday, October 29th, he went by train 
through the outlying townships on Montreal Island, 
calling at the quaint and beautifully decorated vil- 
lages of the habitants, that usually bear the names 
of old French saints. The inhabitants of these 
places, though said to be taciturn and undemonstra- 
tive, met the train in crowds, and in crowds jostled 
to get at the Prince and shake his hand, and they 
showed particular delight when he addressed them 
in their own tongue. 

On Thursday, October 30th, the Prince drove 
about Montreal itself, going to the docks where 
ocean-going ships lie at deep-water quays under the 
towering elevators and the giant loading gear. 
Amid college yells, French and English, he toured 
through the great universities of Laval and McGill 
— famous for learning and Stephen Leacock. He 
also toured the districts where the working man lives, 
holding informal receptions there. 

He opened athletic clubs and went to dances. At 
the balls he was at once the friend of everybody by 
his zest for dancing and his delightfully human habit 
of playing truant in order to sit out on the stairs 
with bright partners. 

As ever his thoughtfulness and tact created leg- 



298 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ends. I was told, and I believe it to be true, that 
after one dinner he was to drive straight to a big 
dance; but, hearing that a great number of people 
had collected along the route to the Ritz-Carlton 
Hotel where he was staying, under the impression 
that he was to return there, he gave orders that his 
car was to go to the hotel before going to the dance. 
It was an unpleasant night, and the drive took him 
considerably out of his way; but, rather than disap- 
point the people who had gathered waiting, he took 
the roundabout journey — and he took it standing 
in his car so that the people could see him in the 
light of the lamps. 

It was at Montreal, too, that the Prince went to 
his first theatrical performance in Canada. A great 
and bright gala performance on music-hall lines had 
been arranged at one of the principal theatres, and 
this the Prince attended. The audience with some 
restraint watched him as he sat in his box, wonder- 
ing what their attitude should be. But a joke sent 
him off in a tremendous laugh, and all, realizing that 
he was there to enjoy himself, joined with him in 
that enjoyment. He declared as he left the theatre 
that it was " A scrumptious show." 



On Sunday, November 3rd, Montreal, after wind- 
ing up the tour with a mighty week, gave the Prince 
a mighty send-off. Officially the tour in Canada 
was ended, though there were two or three ex- 
traordinary functions to be filled at Toronto and 



Montreal 299 



Ottawa. The chief of these was at Toronto on 
Tuesday, November 4th, when the Prince made the 
most impressive speech of the whole tour at Massey 
Hall. 

This hall was packed with one of the keenest 
audiences the Prince had faced in Canada. It was 
made up of members of the Canadian and Empire 
Clubs, and every man there was a leader in business. 
It was both a critical gathering and an acute one. 
It would take nothing on trust, yet it could appreci- 
ate every good point. This audience the Prince won 
completely. 

It was the longest speech the Prince had made, 
yet he never spoke better; he had both mastered 
his nervousness and his need for notes. Decrying 
his abilities as an orator, he yet won his hearing by 
his very lack of oratorical affectation. 

He spoke very earnestly of the wonderful recep- 
tion he had had throughout the breadth of Canada, 
from every type of Canadian — a reception, he said, 
which he was not conceited enough to imagine was 
given to himself personally, but to him as heir to 
the British throne and to the ideal which that throne 
stood for. The throne, he pointed out, consolidated 
the democratic tradition of the Empire, because it 
was a focus for all men and races, for it was outside 
parties and politics; it was a bond which held all 
men together. The Empire of which the throne 
was the focal point was different from other and 
ancient Empires. The Empires of Greece and 
Rome were composed of many states owing alle- 
giance to the mother state. That ideal was now 



300 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

obsolete. The British Empire was a single state 
composed of many nations which give allegiance not 
so much to the mother country, but to the great 
common system of life and government. That is, 
the Dominions were no longer Colonies but sister 
nations of the British Empire. 

Every point of this telling speech was acutely 
realized and immediately applauded, though perhaps 
the warmest applause came after the Prince's defini- 
tion of the Empire, and after his declaration that, in 
visiting the United States of America, he regarded 
himself not only as an Englishman but as a Canadian 
and a representative of the whole Empire. 

In a neat and concise speech the Chairman of the 
meeting had already summed up the meaning and 
effect of the Prince's visit to Canada. The Prince, 
he said, had passed through Canada on a wave of 
enthusiasm that had swept throughout and had dom- 
inated the country. That enthusiasm could have 
but one effect, that of deepening and enriching Can- 
adian loyalty to the Crown, and giving a new sense 
of solidarity among the people of Canada. " Our 
Indian compatriots," he concluded, " with pictur- 
esque aptness have acclaimed the Prince as Chief 
Morning Star. That name is well and prophetically 
chosen. His visit will usher in for Canada a new 
day full of wide-flung influence and high achieve- 
ments." 

This summary is the best comment on the reason 
and effect of the tour. 



Montreal 301 



VI 

The last phase of this truly remarkable tour 
through Canada was staged in Ottawa. As far as 
ceremonial went, it was entirely quiet, though the 
Prince made this an occasion for receiving and thank- 
ing those Canadians whose work had helped to make 
his visit a success. Apart from this, the Prince spent 
restful and recreative days at Government House, 
in preparation for the strenuous time he was to have 
across the American border. 

But before he reached Ottawa there was just one 
small ceremony that, on the personal side, fittingly 
brought the long travel through Canada to an end. 
At a siding near Colburn on the Ottawa road the 
train was stopped, and the Prince personally thanked 
the whole staff of " this wonderful train " for the 
splendid service they had rendered throughout the 
trip. It was, he said, a record of magnificent team 
work, in which every individual had worked with un- 
tiring and unfailing efficiency. 

He made his thanks not only general but also in- 
dividual, for he shook hands with every member of 
the train team; chefs in white overalls, conductors 
in uniform, photographers, the engineers in jeans 
and peaked caps, waiters, clerks, negro porters and 
every man who had helped to make that journey so 
marked an achievement, passed before him to re- 
ceive his thanks. 

And when this was accomplished the Prince him- 
self took over the train for a spell. He became the 
engine-driver. 



302 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

He mounted into the cab and drove the engine for 
eighteen miles, donning the leather gauntlets (which 
every man in Canada who does dirty work wears), 
and manipulating the levers. Starting gingerly at 
first, he soon had the train bowling along merrily at 
a speed that would have done credit to an old pro- 
fessional. 

At Flavelle the usual little crowd had gathered 
ready to surround the rear carriage. To their as- 
tonishment, they found the Prince in the cab, wav- 
ing his hat out of the window at them, enjoying 
both their surprise and his own achievement. 

On Wednesday, November 5th, the journey ended 
at Ottawa, and the train was broken up to our in- 
tense regret. For us it had been a train-load of 
good friends, and though many were to accompany 
us to America, many were not, and we felt the part- 
ing. Among those who came South with us was 
our good friend " Chief " Chamberlain, who had 
been in control of the C.P.R. police responsible for 
the Prince's safety throughout the trip. He was 
one of the most genial cosmopolitans of the world, 
with the real Canadian genius for friendship — in- 
deed so many friends had he, that the Prince of 
Wales expressed the opinion that Canada was popu- 
lated by seven million people, mainly friends of " the 
Chief." 



CHAPTER XXIII 

WASHINGTON 



MY own first real impression of the United 
States lay in my sorrow that I had been 
betrayed into winter underclothing. 

When the Prince left Ottawa on the afternoon of 
November ioth in the President's train, the weather 
was bitterly cold. I suppose it was bitterly cold for 
most of the run south, but an American train does 
not allow a hint of such a thing to penetrate. The 
train was steam-heated to a point to which I had 
never been trained. And at Washington the station 
was steam-heated and the hotel was steam-heated, 
and Washington itself was, for that moment, on the 
steam-heated latitude. America, I felt, had rather 
" put it over on me." 

It was at 8.20 on the night of Monday the ioth 
that the Prince entered the United States at the little 
station of Rouses Point. There was very little cere- 
mony, and it took only the space of time to change 
our engine of Canada to an engine of America. But 
the short ceremony under the arc lamps, and in the 
centre a small crowd, had attraction and significance. 

On the platform were drawn up ranks of khaki 
men, but khaki men with a new note to us. It was a 
guard of honour of " Doughboys," stocky and use- 

303 



304 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ful-looking fellows, in their stetsons and gaiters. 
Close to them was a band of American girls, hold- 
ing as a big canopy the Union Jack and the Stars 
and Stripes joined together to make one flag, joined 
in one piece to signify the meeting-place of the two 
Anglo-Saxon peoples also. 

With this company were the officials who had come 
to welcome the Prince at the border. They were 
led by Mr. Lansing, the Secretary of State, Major- 
General Biddle, who commanded the Americans in 
England, and who was to be the Prince's Military 
aide, and Admiral Niblack, who was to be the Naval 
aide while the Prince was the guest of the United 
States. 

The Prince in a Guard's greatcoat greeted his new 
friends, and inspected the Doughboys, laughing back 
at the crowd when some one called: " Good for you, 
Prince." To the ladies who held the twin flags he 
also expressed his thanks, telling them it was very 
nice of them to come out on so cold a night to meet 
him. Feminine America was, for an instant, non- 
plussed, and found nothing to answer. But their 
vivacity quickly came back to them, and they very 
quickly returned the friendliness and smiles of the 
Prince, shook his hand and wished him the happiest 
of visits in their country. 

The interchange of nationalities in engines being 
effected, the train swung at a rapid pace beside the 
waters of Lake Champlain, pushing south along the 
old marching route into and out of Canada. 

On the morning of November nth it was raining 
heavily and the train ran through a depressing grey- 



Washington 305 



ness. We were all eager to see America, and see her 
at her best, but a train journey, especially in wet 
weather, shows a country at its worst. The short 
stops, for instance, in the stations of great cities 
like Philadelphia and Baltimore were the sort of 
things to give a false impression. The stations 
themselves were empty, a novelty to us, who had 
had three months of crowded stations, and, also, 
about these stations we saw slums, for the first time 
on this Western continent. After having had the 
conviction grow up within me that this Continent 
was the land of comely and decent homes, the sight 
of these drab areas and bad roads was, personally, 
a shock. Big and old cities find it hard to eliminate 
slums, but it seemed to me that it would be merely 
good business to remove such places from out of 
sight of the railways, and to plan town approaches 
on a more impressive scale. America certainly can 
plan buildings on an impressive scale. It has the 
gift of architecture. 

The train went through to Washington in what 
was practically a non-stop run, and arrived in the 
rain. The Prince was received in the rain at the 
back of the train, though that reception was trun- 
cated, so that the great Americans who were there 
to meet him could be presented in the dryness under 
the station roof. 

Heading the group of notable men who met the 
Prince was the Vice-President, Mr. Marshall, and 
with him was the British Ambassador, Lord Grey, 
and General Pershing, a popular figure with the 
waiting crowd and a hero regarded with rapture by 



306 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

American young womanhood — which was willing 
to break the Median regulations of the American 
police to get " just one look at him." 

Outside the station there was a vast crowd of 
American men and women who had braved the down- 
pour to give the Prince a welcome of that peculiarly 
generous quality which we quickly learnt was the 
natural expression of the American feeling towards 
guests. 

I was told, too, that crowds along the streets 
caught up that very cheerful greeting, so that all 
through his ride along the beautiful streets to the 
Belmont House in New Hampshire Avenue, which 
was to be his home in Washington, the Prince was 
made aware of the hospitality extended to him. 

But of this fact I can only speak from hearsay. 
The Press Correspondents were unable to follow 
His Royal Highness through the city. We were 
told that a car was to be placed at our disposal, as 
one had been elsewhere, and we were asked to wait 
our turn. Wait we certainly did, until the last 
junior attache had been served. By that time, how- 
ever, His Royal Highness had outdistanced us, for, 
without a car and without being able to join the 
procession at an early interval, we lost touch with 
happenings. 

By the time we were able to get on to the route 
the streets were deserted; all we could do was to 
admire through the rain the architecture of one of 
the most beautiful cities of the world. 

Apart from the rain on the first day, there was an- 
other factor which handicapped Washington in its 



Washington 307 



welcome to the Prince — the warmth of which could 
not be doubted when it had opportunity for adequate 
expression. This was the fact that no program 
of his doings was published. For some reason which 
I do not pretend to understand, the time-table of his 
comings and goings about the city was not issued to 
the Press, so that the people of Washington had but 
vague ideas of where to see him. The Washington 
journalists protested to us that this was unfair to a 
city that has such a great and just reputation for its 
public hospitality. 

However, where the Prince and the Washington 
people did come together there was an immediate 
and mutual regard. There was just such a " mix- 
ing " that evening, when he visited the National 
Press Club. 

He had spent the day quietly, receiving and re- 
turning calls. One of these calls was upon President 
Wilson at the White House, the Prince driving 
through this city of an ideal in architecture come 
true, to spend ten minutes with Mrs. Wilson in a 
visit of courtesy. 

The National Press Club at Washington is prob- 
ably unique of its kind. I don't mean by that that 
it is comfortable and attractive; all American and 
Canadian clubs are supremely comfortable and at- 
tractive, for in this Continent clubs have been exalted 
to the plane of a gracious and fine art; I mean that 
the spirit of the club gave it a distinguished and 
notable quality. 

America being a country extremely interested in 
politics — Americans enter into politics as English- 



308 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

men enter into cricket — and Washington being the 
vibrant centre of that intense political concern, the 
most acute brains of the American news world natu- 
rally gravitate to the Capital. The National Press 
Club at Washington is a club of experts. Its mem- 
bership is made up of men whose keen intelligence, 
brilliance in craft and devotion to their calling has 
lifted them to the top of the tree in their own par- 
ticular metier. 

There was about these men that extraordinary 
zest in work and every detail of that work that is 
the secret of American driving power. With them, 
and with every other American I came into contact 
with, I felt that work was attacked with something 
of the joy of the old craftsman. My own impres- 
sion after a short stay in America is that the Ameri- 
can works no harder, and perhaps not so hard as the 
average Briton; but he works with infinitely more 
zest, and that is what makes him the dangerous fel- 
low in competition that he is. 

The Prince had met many journalists at Belmont 
House in the morning, and had very readily accepted 
an invitation to visit them at their club, and after 
dinner he came not into this den of lions, but into a 
den of Daniels — a condition very trying for lions. 
Arriving in evening dress, his youth seemed accentu- 
ated among so many shrewd fellows, who were there 
obviously not to take him or any one for granted. 

From the outset his frankness and entire lack of 
affectation created the best of atmospheres, and in a 
minute or two his sense of humour had made all there 
his friends. Having met a few of the journalist 



Washington 30Q 



corps in the morning, he now expressed a wish to 
meet them all. The President of the Club raised 
his eyebrows, and, indicating the packed room, sug- 
gested that " all " was, perhaps, a large order. The 
Prince merely laughed : " All I ask is that you don't 
grip too hard," he said, and he shook hands with and 
spoke to every member present. 

The Prince certainly made an excellent impression 
upon men able to judge the quality of character with- 
out being dazzled by externals, and many definite 
opinions were expressed after he left concerning his 
modesty, his manliness and his faculty for being 
" a good mixer," which is the faculty Americans 
most admire. 

11 

Wednesday, November 13th, was a busy day. 
The Prince was out early driving through the beauti- 
ful avenues of the city in a round of functions. 

Washington is one of the most attractive of cities 
to drive in. It is a city, one imagines, built to be 
the place where the architects' dreams come true. 
It has the air of being a place where the designer 
has been able to work at his best; climate and a 
clarified air, natural beauty and the approbation of 
brother men have all conspired to help and stimulate. 

It has scores of beautiful and magnificently pro- 
portioned buildings, each obviously the work of a 
fine artist, and practically every one of those build- 
ings has been placed on a site as effective and as 
appropriate as its design. That, perhaps, was a 
simple matter, for the whole town had been planned 



310 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

with a splendid art. Its broad avenues and its de- 
lightful parks fit in to the composite whole with an 
exquisite justness. Its residences have the same 
charm of excellent craftsmanship one appreciates in 
the classic public buildings; they are mellow in 
colouring, behind their screen of trees; nearly all 
are true and fine in line, while some — an Italianate 
house on, I think, 15 th Avenue, which is the property 
of Mr. McLean of the Washington Post, is one — 
are supremely beautiful. 

The air of the city is astonishingly clear, and the 
grave white buildings of the Public Offices, the 
splendid white aspiration of the skyscrapers, have 
a sparkling quality that shows them to full advan- 
tage. There may, of course, be more beautiful 
cities than Washington, but certainly Washington 
is beautiful enough. 

The streets have an exhilaration. There is an in- 
tense activity of humanity. Automobiles there are, 
of course, by the thousand, parked everywhere, with 
policemen strolling round to chalk times on them, 
or to impound those cars that previous chalk-marks 
show to have been parked beyond the half-hour or 
hour of grace. Trie sidewalks are vivid with the 
shuttling of the smartest of women, women who 
choose their clothes with a crispness, a flair of their 
own, and which owes very little to other countries, 
and carry them and themselves with a vivid exquisite- 
ness that gives them an undeniable individuality. 
The stores are as the Canadian stores, only there 
are more of them, and they are bigger. Their 
windows make a dado of attractiveness along the 



Washington 311 



streets, but, all the same, I do not think the windows 
are dressed quite as well as in London, and I'm 
nearly sure not so well as in Canada — but this is 
a mere masculine opinion. 

Through this attractive city the Prince drove in a 
round of ceremonies. His first call was at the Head- 
quarters of the American Red Cross, then wrung 
with the fervours of a " tag " week of collecting. 
From here he went to the broad, sweet park beside 
the Potomac, where a noble memorial was being 
erected to the memory of Lincoln. This, as might 
be expected from this race of fine builders, is an 
admirable Greek structure admirably situated in the 
green of the park beside the river. 

The Prince went over the building, and gained 
an idea of what it would be like on completion from 
the plans. He also surprised his guides by his in- 
timate knowledge of Lincoln's life and his intense 
admiration for him. 

At the hospital, shortly after, he visited two 
thousand of " My comrades in arms," as he called 
them. Outside the hospital on the lawns were many 
men who had been wounded at Chateau Thierry, 
some in wheeled chairs. Seeing them, the Prince 
swung aside from his walk to the hospital entrance 
and chatted with them, before entering the wards 
to speak with others of the wounded men. 

On leaving the hospital he was held up. A Red 
Cross nurse ran up to him and " tagged " him, plant- 
ing the little Red Cross button in his coat and de- 
claring that the Prince was enrolled in the District 
Chapter. The Prince very promptly countered 



312 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

with a dollar bill, the official subscription, saying 
that his enrolment must be done in proper style and 
on legal terms. 

In the afternoon, the Prince utilized his free time 
in making a call on the widow of Admiral Dewey, 
spending a few minutes in interesting conversation 
with her. 

The evening was given over to one of the most 
brilliant scenes of the whole tour. At the head of 
the splendid staircase of white marble in the Con- 
gress Library he held a reception of all the members 
of the Senate and the House of Representatives, 
their wives and their families. 

Even to drive to such a reception was to experi- 
ence a thrill. 

As the Prince drove down the straight and end- 
less avenues that strike directly through Washington 
to the Capitol, like spokes to the hub of a vast wheel, 
he saw that immense, classic building shining above 
the city in the sky. In splendid and austere white- 
ness the Capitol rises terrace upon terrace above the 
trees, its columns, its cornices and its dome blanched 
in the cold radiance of scores of arc lights hidden 
among the trees. 

Like fireflies attracted to this centre of light, cars 
moved their sparkling points of brightness down the 
vivid avenues, and at the vestibule of the Library, 
which lies in the grounds apart from the Capitol, 
set down fit denizens for this kingdom of radiance. 

Senators and parliamentarians generally are sober 
entities, but wives and daughters made up for them 
in colour and in comeliness. In cloth of gold, in 



Washington 313 



brocades, in glowing satin and flashing silk, multi- 
coloured and ever-shifting, a stream of jewelled 
vivacity pressed up the severe white marble stairs 
in the severe white marble hall. There could not 
have been a better background for such a shining 
and pulsating mass of living colour. There was no 
distraction from that warm beauty of moving human- 
ity; the flowers, too, were severe, severe and white; 
great masses of white chrysanthemums were all that 
was needed, were all that was there. 

And at the head of the staircase a genius in design 
had made one stroke of colour, one stroke of astound- 
ing and poignant scarlet. On this scarlet carpet the 
Prince in evening dress stood and encountered the 
tide of guests that came up to him, were received by 
him, and flowed away from him in a thousand par- 
ticles and drops of colour, as women, with all the 
vivacity of their clothes in their manner, and men in 
uniforms or evening dress, striving to keep pace 
with them, went drifting through the high, clear 
purity of the austere corridors. 

It was a scene of infinite charm. It was a scene 
of infinite significance, also. For close to the Prince 
as he stood and received the men and women of 
America, were many original documents dealing with 
the separation of England and the American colonies. 
There was much in the fact that a Prince of England 
should be receiving the descendants of those colonies 
in such surroundings, and meeting those descendants 
with a friendliness and frankness which equalled 
their own frank friendliness. 



314 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

in 

Thursday, November 14th, was a day of extreme 
interest for the Prince. It was the day when he 
visited the home of the first President of America, 
and also visited, in his home, the President in power 
today. 

The morning was given over to an investiture of 
the American officers and nurses who had won British 
honours during the war. It was held at Belmont 
House, and was a ceremony full of colour. Mem- 
bers of all the diplomatic corps in Washington in 
their various uniforms attended, and these were 
grouped in the beautiful ballroom full of splendid 
pictures and wonderful china. The simplicity of 
the investiture itself stood out against the colourful 
setting as generals in khaki, admirals in blue, the 
rank and file of both services, and the neat and 
picturesque Red Cross nurses came quietly across 
the polished floor to receive their decorations and 
a comradely hand-clasp from the Prince. 

It was after lunch that the Prince motored out to 
Mount Vernon, the home and burial-place of Wash- 
ington, to pay his tribute to the great leader of the 
first days of America. It is a serene and beautiful 
old house, built in the colonial style, with a pillared 
verandah along its front. The visit here was of 
the simplest kind. 

At the modest tomb of the great general and 
statesman, which is near the house, the Prince in 
silence deposited a wreath, and a little distance away 
he also planted a cedar to commemorate his visit. 



Washington 315 



He showed his usual keen curiosity in the house, 
whose homely rooms of mellow colonial furniture 
seemed as though they might be filled at any mo- 
ment with gentlemen in Hessians and brave coats, 
whose hair was in queues and whose accents would be 
loud and rich in condemnation of the interference 
of the Court Circle overseas. 

Showing interest in the historic details of the 
house, the picture of his grandfather abruptly filled 
him with anxiety. He looked at the picture and 
asked if " Baron Renfrew" (King Edward) had 
worn a top hat on his visit, and from his nervousness 
it seemed that he felt that his own soft felt hat was 
not quite the thing. He was reassured, however, 
on this point, for democracy has altered many things 
since the old days, including hats. 

Both on his way out, and his return journey, the 
Prince was the object of enthusiasm from small 
groups who recognized him, most of whom had 
trusted to luck or their intuition for their chance of 
seeing him. About the entrance of the White House, 
to which he drove, there was a small and ardent 
crowd, which cheered him when he swept through 
the gates with his motor-cycle escort, and bought 
photographs of him from hawkers when he 
had passed. The hawker, in fact, did a brisk 
trade. 

There had been much speculation whether His 
Royal Highness would be able to see President Wil- 
son at all, for he was yet confined to his bed. The 
doctors decided for it, and there was a very pleas- 
ant meeting which seems to have helped the Presi- 



316 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

dent to renew his good spirits in the youthful charm 
of his visitor. 

After taking tea with Mrs. Wilson, His Royal 
Highness went up to the room of the President on 
the second floor, and Mr. Wilson, propped up in 
bed, received him. The friendship that had begun 
in England was quickly renewed, and soon both were 
laughing over the Prince's experiences on his tour 
and " swopping " impressions. 

Mr. Wilson's instinctive vein of humour came 
back to him under the pleasure of the reunion, and 
he pointed out to the Prince that if he was ill in 
bed, he had taken the trouble to be ill in a bed of 
some celebrity. It was a bed that made sickness 
auspicious. King Edward had used it when he had 
stayed at the White House as " Baron Renfrew," 
and President Lincoln had also slept on it during his 
term of office, which perhaps accounted for its mas- 
sive and rugged utility. 

The visit was certainly a most attractive one for 
the President, and had an excellent effect; his physi- 
cian reported the next morning that Mr. Wilson's 
spirits had risen greatly, and that as a result of the 
enjoyable twenty minutes he had spent with the 
Prince. On Friday, November 15 th, the Prince 
went to the United States Naval College at An- 
napolis, a place set amid delightful surroundings. 
He inspected the whole of the Academy, and was 
immensely impressed by the smartness of the stu- 
dents, who, themselves, marked the occasion by treat- 
ing him to authentic college yells on his departure. 

The week-end was spent quietly at the beautiful 



Washington 317 



holiday centre of Sulphur Springs. It was a visit 
devoted to privacy and golf. 



IV 

During our stay in Washington the air was thick 
with politics, for it was the week in which the Sen- 
ate were dealing with Clause Ten of the Peace 
Treaty. The whole of Washington, and, in fact, 
the whole of America, was tingling with politics, and 
we could not help being affected by the current emo- 
tion. 

I am not going to attempt to discuss American 
politics, but I will say that it seemed to me that 
politics enter more personally into the life of Ameri- 
cans than with the British, and that they feel them 
more intensely. At the same time I had a definite 
impression that American politics have a different 
construction to ours. The Americans speak of 
" The Political Game," and I had the feeling that 
it was a game played with a virtuosity of tactics and 
with a metallic intensity, and the principle of the 
game was to beat the other fellows. So much so 
that the aim and end of politics were obscured, and 
that the battle was fought not about measures but 
on the advantages one party would gain over an- 
other by victory. 

That is, the " Political Game " is a game of the 
" Ins " and " Outs " played for parliamentary suc- 
cess with the habitual keenness and zest of the 
American. 

This is not a judgment but an impression. I do 



318 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

not pretend to know anything of America. I do not 
think any one can know America well unless he is 
an American. Those who think that America 
quickly yields its secrets to the British mind simply 
because America speaks the English language need 
the instruction of a visit to America. 

America has all the individuality and character 
of a separate and distinct State. To think that 
the United States is a sort of Transatlantic Britain 
is simply to approach the United States with a set of 
preconceived notions that are bound to suffer con- 
siderable jarring. Both races have many things in 
common, that is obvious from the fact of a common 
language, and, in a measure, from a common de- 
scent; but they have things that are not held in com- 
mon. It needs a closer student of America than 
I am to go into this; I merely give my own impres- 
sion, and perhaps a superficial one at that. It may 
offer a point of elucidation to those people who find 
themselves shocked because English-speaking Amer- 
ica sometimes does not act in an English manner, or 
respond to English acts. 

America is America first and all the time; it is as 
complete and as definite in its spirits as the oldest 
of nations, and in its own way. Its patriotism is 
intense, more intense than British patriotism (though 
not more real), because by nature the American is 
more intense. The vivid love of Americans for 
America is the same type of passion that the French- 
man has for France. 

The character of the American, as I encountered 
him in Washington, Detroit, and New York — a 






Washington 319 



very limited orbit — suggested differences from the 
character of the Englishman. The American, as 
I see him, is more simple, more puritan, and more 
direct than the Briton. His generosity is a most 
astonishing thing. He is, as far as I can see, a 
genuine lover of his brother-man, not theoretically 
but actively, for he is anxious to get into contact, to 
" mix," to make the most of even a chance acquaint- 
ance. Simply and directly he exposes the whole of 
himself, says what he means and withholds nothing, 
so that acquaintance should be made on an equitable 
and genuine basis. To the more conservative Briton 
this is alarming; brought up in a land of reticences, 
the Briton wonders what the American is " getting 
at," what does he want? What is his game? 
The American on his side is baffled by the British 
habit of keeping things back, and he, too, perhaps 
wonders why this fellow is going slow with me? 
Doesn't he want to be friends? 

Personally, I think that the directness and sim- 
plicity of the Americans is the directness and sim- 
plicity of the artist, the man who has no use for 
unessentials. And one gets this sense of artistry in 
an American's business dealings. He goes directly 
at his object, and he goes with a concentrated power 
and a zest that is exhilarating. Here, too, he ex- 
poses his hand in a way bewildering to the Britisher, 
who sometimes finds the American so candid in his 
transactions that he becomes suspicious of there be- 
ing something more behind it. 

To the American work is something zestful, joy- 
ous. He likes to get things done; he likes to do big 



320 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

things with a big gesture — sometimes to the dam- 
age of detail, which he has overlooked — for him 
work is craftsmanship, a thing to be carried through 
with the delight of a craftsman. He is, in fact, the 
artist as business man. 

Like all artists he has an air of hardness, the ruth- 
lessness to attain an end. But like all artists he is 
quick and generous, vivid in enthusiasm and hard to 
daunt. Like the artist he is narrow in his point of 
view at times and decisive in opinion — simply be- 
cause his own point of vision is all-absorbing. 

This, for example, is apparent in his democracy, 
which is extraordinarily wide in certain respects, and 
singularly restricted in others — an example of this 
is the way the Americans handle offenders against 
their code; whether they be I.W.W., strikers or the 
like, their attitude is infinitely more ruthless than 
the British attitude. Another example is, having 
so splendid a freedom, they allow themselves to be 
" bossed " by policemen, porters and a score of 
others who exert an authority so drastic on occasions 
that no Briton would stand it. 

But over all I was struck by the vividity of the 
Americans I met. Business men, journalists, 
writers, store girls, clerks, clubmen, railway men — 
all of them had an air of passionate aliveness, an in- 
tellectual avidity that made contact with them an 
affair of delightful excitement. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

NEW YORK 



THERE was no qualification or reservation in 
New York's welcome to the Prince of 
Wales. 

In the last year or so I have seen some great 
crowds, and by that I mean not merely vast aggre- 
gations of people, but vast gatherings of people 
whose ardour carried away the emotions with a tre- 
mendous psychic force. During that year I had 
seen the London crowd that welcomed back the Brit- 
ish military leader; the London and Manchester 
crowds, and vivid and stirring crowds they were, 
that dogged the footsteps of President Wilson; I had 
seen the marvellous and poignant crowd at the Lon- 
don Victory March, and I had had a course of 
crowds, vigorous, affectionate and lively, in Mon- 
treal, Toronto and throughout Canada. 

I had been toughened to crowds, yet the New 
York crowd that welcomed the Prince was a fresh 
experience. It was a crowd that, in spite of writing 
continuously about crowds for four months, gave 
me a direct impulse to write yet again about a 
crowd, that gave me the feeling that here was some- 
thing fresh, sparkling, human, warm, ardent and 
provocative. It was a crowd with a flutter of 

321 



322 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

laughter in it, a crowd that had a personality, an in- 
souciance, an independence in its friendliness. It 
was a crowd that I shall always put beside other 
mental pictures of big crowds, in that gallery of 
clear vignettes of things impressive that make the 
memory. 

There was a big crowd about the Battery long be- 
fore the Prince was due to arrive across the river 
from the Jersey City side. It was a good-humoured 
crowd that helped the capable New York policemen 
to keep itself well in hand. It was not only thick 
about the open grass space of the Battery, but it 
was clustering on the skeleton structure of the 
Elevated Railway, and mounting to the sky, floor 
by floor, on the skyscrapers. 

High up on the twenty-second floor of neighbour- 
ing buildings we could see a crowd of dolls and win- 
dows, and the dolls were waving shreds of cotton. 
The dolls were women and the cotton shred was 
" Old Glory." High up on the tremendous cornice 
of one building a tiny man stood with all the calm 
gravity of a statue. He was unconcerned by the 
height, he was only concerned in obtaining an eagle's 
eye view. 

About the landing-stage itself, the landing-stage 
where the new Americans and the notabilities land, 
there was a wide space, kept clear by the police. 
Admirable police these, who can handle crowds with 
any police, who held us up with a wall of adamant 
until we showed our letters from the New York 
Reception Committee (our only, and certainly not 
the official, passes), and then not only let us through 



New York 323 



without fuss but helped us in every possible way to 
go everywhere and see everything. 

In this wide space were gathered the cars for the 
procession, and the notabilities who were to meet 
the Prince, and the camera men who were to snap 
him. Into it presently marched United States 
Marines and Seamen. A hefty lot of men, who 
moved casually, and with a slight sense of slouch as 
though they wished to convey " We're whales for 
fighting, but no damned militarists." 

Since the Prince was not entering New York by 
steamer — the most thrilling way — but by means 
of a railway journey from Sulphur Springs, New 
York had taken steps to correct this mode of entry. 
He was not to miss the first impact of the city. He 
would make a water entry, if only an abbreviated 
one, and so experience one of the Seven (if there 
are not more, or less) Sensations of the World, 
a sight of the profile of Manhattan Island. 

The profile of Manhattan (blessed name that O. 
Henry has rolled so often on the palate) is lyric. 
It is a sierra of skyscrapers. It is a flight of per- 
fect rockets, the fire of which has frozen into solidity 
in mid-soaring. It is a range of tall, narrow, poig- 
nant buildings that makes the mind think of giants, 
or fairies, or, anyhow, of creatures not quite of this 
world. It is one of the few things the imagination 
cannot visualize adequately, and so gets from it a 
satisfaction and not a disappointment. 

This sight the Prince saw as he crossed in a launch 
from the New Jersey side, and " the beauty and 
dignity of the towering skyline," his own words, so 



324 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

impressed him that he was forced to speak of it time 
and time again during his visit to the city. And on 
top of that impression came the second and even 
greater one, for, and again I use his own words, 
" men and women appeal to me even more than 
sights." This second impression was " the most 
warm and friendly welcome that followed me all 
through the drive in the city." 

When the Prince landed he seemed to me a little 
anxious; he was at the threshold of a great and im- 
portant city, and his welcome was yet a matter of 
speculation. In less than fifteen minutes he was 
smiling as he had smiled all through Canada, and, 
as in Canada, he was standing in his car, formality 
forgotten, waving back to the crowd with a friend- 
liness that matched the friendliness with which he 
was received. 

He faced the city of Splendid Heights with 
glances of wonder at the line of cornices that crowned 
the narrow canyon of Broadway, and rose up cre- 
scendo in a vista closed by the campanile of the 
Woolworth Building, raised like a pencil against the 
sky, fifty-five storeys high. On the beaches beneath 
these great crags, on the sidewalks, and pinned be- 
tween the sturdy policemen — who do not turn backs 
to the crowd but face it alertly — and the sheer walls 
was a lively and vast throng. And rising up by 
storeys was a lively and vast throng, hanging out 
of windows and clinging to ledges, perilous but 
happy in their skyscraper-eye view. 

And from these high-up windows there began at 
once a characteristic " Down Town " expression of 



New York 325 



friendliness. Ticker-tape began to shoot downward 
in long uncoiling snakes to catch in flagpoles and 
window-ledges in strange festoons. Strips of paper 
began to descend in artificial snow, and confetti, and 
basket-loads of torn letter paper. All manner of 
bits of paper fluttered and swirled in the air, mak- 
ing a grey nebula in the distance; glittering like 
spangles of gold against the severe white cliffs of the 
skyscrapers when the sun caught them. 

On the narrow roadway the long line of automo- 
biles was littered and strung with paper, and the 
Prince had a mantle of it, and was still cheery. He 
could not help himself. The reception he was get- 
ting would have swept away a man of stone, and he 
has never even begun to be a man of stone. The 
pace was slow, because of the marching Marine 
escort, and people and Prince had full opportunity 
for sizing up each other. And both people and 
Prince were satisfied. 

Escorted by the motor-cyclist police, splendid fel- 
lows who chew gum and do their duty with an as- 
tonishing certainty and nimbleness, the Prince came 
to the City Hall Square, where the modern Bronto- 
saurs of commerce lift mightily above the low and 
graceful City Hall, which has the look of a petite 
mother perpetually astonished at the size of the 
brood she has reared. 

Inside the hall the Prince became a New Yorker, 
and received a civic welcome. He expressed his 
real pride at now being a Freeman of the two 
greatest cities in the world, New York and Lon- 
don, two cities that were, moreover, so much akin, 



326 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

and upon which depends to an extraordinary de- 
gree the financial health and the material as well as 
spiritual welfare of all continents. As for his wel- 
come, he had learnt to appreciate the quality of 
American friendship from contact with members of 
the splendid fighting forces that had come overseas, 
but even that, he indicated, had not prepared him 
for the wonder of the greeting he had received. 

Outside the City Hall the vast throng had waited 
patiently, and they seemed to let their suppressed 
energy go as the Prince came out of the City Hall 
to face the massed batteries of photographers, who 
would only allow snapshots to be his " pass " to his 
automobile. 

The throngs in financial " Down Town " gave way 
to the massed ranks of workers from the big whole- 
sale and retail houses that occupy middle New York 
as the Prince passed up Broadway, the street that is 
not as broad as other streets, and the only one that 
wanders at its own fancy in a kingdom of parallels 
and right-angles. At the corner where stands 
Wanamaker's great store the crowd was thickest. 
Here was stationed a band in a quaint old-time uni- 
form of red tunics, bell trousers and shakos, while 
facing them across the street was a squad of girls 
in pretty blue and white military uniforms and 
hats. 

Soon the line of cars swung into speed and gained 
Fifth Avenue, passing the Flatiron building, which is 
now not a wonder. Such soaring structures as the 
Metropolitan Tower, close by in Madison Square, 
have taken the shine out of it, and in the general 



New York 327 



atmosphere of giants one does not notice its f reakish- 
ness unless one is looking for it. 

Fifth Avenue is superb; it is the route of pageants 
by right of air and quality. It is Oxford Street, 
London, made broad and straight and clean. It has 
fine buildings along its magnificent reach, and some 
noble ones. It has dignity and vivacity, it has space 
and it has an air. In the graceful open space about 
Madison Square there stood the massive Arch of 
Victory, under which America's soldiers had swung 
when they returned from the front. It was a tem- 
porary arch constructed with realism and ingenuity; 
the Prince passed under it on his way up the avenue. 

He went at racing pace up to and into Central 
Park, that convincing affectation of untrammelled 
Nature (convincing because it ij untrammelled), 
that beautiful residences of town dwellers look into. 
He swung to the left by the gracious pile of the 
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and out on to 
Riverside Park, that hangs its gardens over the 
deep waters of the Hudson River. Standing 
isolated and with a fine serenity above green and 
water is General Grant's tomb, and at the wideflung 
white plaza of this the Prince dismounted, going on 
foot to the tomb, and in the tomb, going alone to 
deposit a wreath on the great soldier's grave. 

Riverside Park had its flowering of bright people, 
and its multitude of motors to swarm after the 
Prince as he passed along the Drive, paused to re- 
view a company of English-Americans who had 
served in the war, and then continued on his way to 
the Yacht Club jetty, where he was to take boat to 



328 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the Renown. Lying in deep water high up in the 
town was this one of the greatest of the modern war- 
ships, her greatness considerably diminished by the 
buildings lifting above her. To her the Prince went 
after nearly three months' absence, and on her he 
lived during his stay in New York. 



II 

When I say that the Prince lived on board the Re- 
nown, I mean that he lived on her in his moments to 
spare. In New York the visitor is lucky who has 
a few moments to spare. New York's hospitality 
is electric. It rushes the guest off his feet. Even 
if New York is not definitely engaged to entertain 
you at specific minutes, it comes round to know 
if you have everything you want, whether it can do 
anything for you. 

New York was calling on the Prince almost as 
soon as he went aboard. There was a lightning 
lunch to Mr. Wanamaker, the President of the Re- 
ception Committee, and other members of that body, 
and then the first of the callers began to chug off 
from the landing-stage towards the Renown. Dep- 
utations from all the foreign races that make New 
York came over the side, distinguished Americans 
called. And, before anybody else, the American 
journalist was there. 

The Prince was no stranger to the American 
journalist. They were old friends of his. Some of 
them had been with him in the Maritime Provinces 
of Canada, and he had made friends with them at 



New York 329 



Quebec. He remembered these writers and that 
friendship was renewed in a pleasant chat. The 
journalists liked him, too, though they admit that 
he has a charming way of disarming them. They 
rather admired the adroit diplomacy with which he 
derailed such leading questions as those dealing with 
the delicate and infinite subject of American girls: 
whether he liked them: and how much? 

He met these correspondents quite frankly, ap- 
preciating at once the fact that it was through them 
that he could express to the people of America his 
intense feeling of thanks for the singular warmth 
of America's greeting. 

From seeing all these visitors the Prince had only 
time left to get into evening dress and to be whirled 
off in time to attend a glittering dinner given at the 
Waldorf-Astoria by Mrs. Henry Pomeroy David- 
son on behalf of the Council of the American Red 
Cross. It was a vivid and beautiful function, but it 
was one that bridged the time before another, and 
before ten o'clock the Prince was on the move again, 
and, amid the dance of the motor-bike " cops," was 
being rushed off to the Metropolitan Opera House. 

He was swung down Broadway where the adver- 
tisements made a fantasy of the sky, a fantasy of 
rococo beauty where colours on the huge pallets of 
skyscrapers danced and ran, fused and faded, 
grouped and regrouped, each a huge and coherent 
kaleidoscope. 

Here a gigantic kitten of lights turned a complete 
somersault in the heavens as it played with a ball of 
v/ool. There six sky-high manikins with match- 



33° Westward with the Prince of Wales 

stick limbs, went through an incandescent perpetual 
and silent dance. In the distance was a gigantic 
bull advertising tobacco — all down this heavenly 
vista there were these immense signs, lapping and 
over-lapping in dazzling chaos. And seen from one 
angle, high up, unsupported, floating in the very air 
and eerily unsubstantial, was a temple lit by bale- 
fires that shone wanly at its base. It was merely 
a building superimposed upon a skyscraper, but in 
the dark there was no skyscraper, and the amazing 
structure hung there lambent, silent, enigmatic, a 
Wagnerian temple in tjie sky. 

Broadway, which sprouts theatres as a natural 
garden sprouts flowers, was jewelled with lights, 
lights that in the clear air of this continent shone 
with a lucidity that we in England do not know. Be- 
fore the least lighted of these buildings the Prince 
stopped. He had arrived at the austere temple of 
the high arts, the Metropolitan Opera House. 

Inside Caruso and a brilliant audience waited im- 
patiently for his presence. The big and rather 
sombre house was quick with colour and with beauty. 
The celebrated " Diamond Horseshoe," the tiers of 
the galleries, and the floor of the house were vivid 
with dresses, shimmering and glinting with all the 
evasive shades of the spectrum, with here a flash of 
splendid jewels, there the slow and sumptuous flut- 
ter of a great ostrich fan. 

Part of the program had been played, but Pag- 
liacci and Caruso were held up while the vivid and 
ardent people craned out of their little crimson boxes 
in the Horseshoes and turned and looked up from the 



New York 331 



bright mosaic of the floor at the empty box which 
was to be the Prince's. 

There was a long roll of drums, and with a single 
movement the orchestra marched into the melody 
of " God bless the Prince of Wales,'' and the Prince, 
looking extraordinarily embarrassed, came to the 
front of the box. 

At once there was no melody of " God bless the 
Prince of Wales" perceptible; a wave of cheering 
and hand-clapping swept it away. The whole of the 
people on the floor of the house turned to look up- 
ward and to cheer. The people under the tiers 
crowded forward into the gangways until the gang- 
ways were choked, and the floor was a solid mass 
of humanity. Bright women and men correctly 
garbed imperilled their necks in the galleries above 
in order to look down. It was an unforgettable 
moment, and for the Prince a disconcerting one. 

He stood blushing and looking down, wondering 
how on earth he was to endure this stark publicity. 
He was there poised bleakly for all to see, an un- 
enviable position. And there was no escape. He 
must stand there, because it was his job, and recover 
from the nervousness that had come from finding 
himself so abruptly thrust on to this veritable pillar 
of Stylites in the midst of an interested and curious 
throng. 

The interest and the curiosity was intensely 
friendly. His personality suffered not at all from 
the fact that he had lost his calm at a moment when 
only the case-hardened could have remained un- 
moved. His embarrassment, indeed, made the audi- 



33 2 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

ence more friendly, and it was with a sort of inti- 
macy that they tittered at his familiar tricks of 
nervousness, his fumbling at his tie, tugging of his 
coat lapels, the passing of the hand over his hair, 
even the anxious use of his handkerchief. 

And this friendly and soft laughter became really 
appreciative when they saw him tackle the chairs. 
There were two imposing and pompous gilt chairs 
at the front of the box, filling it, elbowing all minor, 
human chairs out of the way. The Prince turned 
and looked at them, and turned them out. He 
would have none of them. He was not there to be 
a superior person at all; he was there to be human 
and enjoy human companionship. He had the front 
of the box filled with chairs, and he had friends in 
to sit with him and talk with him when intervals in 
the music permitted. And the audience was his 
friend for that; they admired him for the way he 
turned his back on formalities and ceremonials. 
General Pershing, who gratifies one's romantic sense 
by being extraordinarily like one's imaginative pic- 
tures of a great General, came to sit with him, and 
there was another outburst of cheering. I think 
that the petits morceaux from the operas were but 
side-shows. Although Rosina Galli ravished the 
house with her dancing (how she must love dancing) , 
opera glasses were swivelled more toward the Royal 
box than to the stage, and the audience made a close 
and curious study of every movement and every in- 
flection of the Prince. 

The cheering broke out again, from people who 
crowded afresh into the gangways, when the Prince 



New York 333 



left, and in a mighty wave of friendliness the official 
program of the first day closed. 



in 

There was an unofficial ending to the day. The 
Prince, with several of his suite, walked in New 
York, viewed this exhilarating city of lights and 
vistas by night, got his own private and unformal 
view of the wonders of skyscraping townscape, the 
quick, nervous shuttle of the sidewalks, the rattle of 
the " Elevated," the sight, for the first time in a long 
journey, of motor-buses. And without doubt he 
tasted the wonder of a city of automobiles still cling- 
ing to the hansom cab. 

About this outing there have been woven stories 
of a glamour which might have come from the 
fancy of O. Henry and the author of the " Arabian 
Nights " working in collaboration. The Prince is 
said to have plunged into the bizarre landscape of the 
Bowery, which is Whitechapel better lighted, and 
better dressed with up-to-date cafes, where there are 
dance halls in which with the fathomless seriousness 
of the modern, jazz is danced to violins and banjoes 
and the wailing ukelele. 

They tell me that Ichabod has been written across 
the romantic glory of the Bowery, and that for colour 
and the spice of life one has to go further west 
(which is Manhattan's East End) to Greenwich Vil- 
lage, where life strikes Chelsea attitudes, and where 
one descends subterraneanly, or climbs over the roofs 
of houses to Matisse-like restaurants where one eats 



334 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

rococo meals in an atmosphere of cigarette smoke, 
rice-white faces, scarlet lips, and bobbed hair. But 
there are yet places in the Bowery to which one taxis 
with a thrill of hope, where the forbidden cock- 
tail is served in a coffee cup, where wine bottles are 
put on to the table with brown paper wrapped round 
them to preserve the fiction that they came from 
one's own private (and legal) store, where in bare, 
studiously Bowery chambers the hunter of a new 
frisson sits and dines and hopes for the worst. 

The Bowery is dingy and bright; it has hawkers' 
barrows and chaotic shop windows. It has the curi- 
osity-stimulating, cosmopolite air of all dockside 
areas, but to the Englishman accustomed to the pic- 
turesque bedragglement of East End costumes, it is 
almost dismayingly well-dressed. Its young men 
have the leanness of outline that comes from an 
authentic American tailor. Its Jewesses have the 
neat crispness of American fashion that gives their 
vivid beauty a new and sparkling note. It was 
astonishing the number of beautiful young women 
one saw on the Bowery, but not astonishing when one 
recalls the number of beautiful young women one 
saw in New York. Fifth Avenue at shopping time, 
for example, ceases to be a street: it becomes a 
pageant of youth and grace. 

The Prince, of course, may have gone into the 
Bowery, and walked therein with the air of a modern 
Caliph, but I myself have not heard of it. I was 
told that he went for a walk to the house of a friend, 
and that after paying a very pleasant and ordinary 
visit he returned to the Renown to get what sleep he 



New York 335 



could before the adventure of another New York 
day. 

IV 

The morning of Wednesday, November 19th, was 
devoted by the Prince to high finance ; he went down 
to Wall Street and to visit the other temples of the 
gold god. 

When one has become acclimated to the soaring 
upward rush of the skyscrapers (and one quite soon 
loses consciousness of them, for where all buildings 
are huge each building becomes commonplace), 
when one stops looking upward, " Down Town " 
New York is strangely like the " City " area of Lon- 
don. Walking Broadway one might easily imagine 
oneself in the neighbourhood of the Bank of Eng- 
land; Wall Street might easily be a turning out of 
Bishopsgate or Cannon Street. Broad Street, New 
York, is not so very far removed in appearance from 
Broad Street, London. 

There is the same preoccupied congestion of the 
same work-mazed people: clerks, typists (stenog- 
raphers), book-keepers, messengers and masters, 
though, perhaps, the people of the New York busi- 
ness quarter do not wear the air of sadness those 
of London wear. 

And there is the same massive solidity of business 
buildings, great blocks that house thirty thousand 
souls in the working day, and these buildings have 
the same air as their London brothers; that is, they 
seem to be monuments to financial integrity (just as 
mahogany furniture, with a certain type, is an indi- 



336 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

cation of " standing and weight") rather than of- 
fices. And if New York buildings are, on the whole, 
more distinguished, are characterized by a better art, 
they are, on the other hand, not relieved by the 
humanity of the shops that gives an air of bright- 
ness to the London commercial area. In New York 
11 Down Town " the shops are mainly inside the 
buildings, and it is in the corridors of the big blocks 
that the clerk buys his magazines, papers, " candies," 
sandwiches and cigars. 

The interiors of the buildings are ornate, they are 
sleek with marble, and quite often beautiful with it. 
They are well arranged; the skyscraper habit makes 
for short corridors, and you can always find your 
man easily (as in the hotels) by the number of his 
room: thus, if his number is 1201 he is on the 
twelfth floor, 802 is on the eighth, and 2203 is on 
the twenty-second; each floor is a ten. 

Up to the floors one ascends by means of one of a 
fleet of elevators, some being locals and some being 
expresses to a certain floor and local beyond. 
Whether the fleet is made up of two or ten lifts, 
there is always a man to control them, a station- 
master of lifts who gives the word to the liftboys. 
To the Englishman he is a new phenomenon. He 
seems a trifle unnecessary [but he may be put there 
by law] ; he is soon seen to be one of a multitude of 
men in America who " stand over " other men while 
they do the job. 

The unexpected thing in buildings so fine as this, 
occupied by men who are addicted to business, is that 
the offices have rather a makeshift air. The offices 



New York 337 



I saw in America do not compare in comfort with the 
offices I know in England. There is a bleakness, an 
aridity about them that makes English business 
rooms seem luxurious in comparison. I talked of 
this phenomenon with a friend, instancing one great 
office, to be met with surprise and told: "Why! 
But that office is held up as an example of what offices 
should be like. We are agitating to get ours as good 
as that." After this I did not talk about offices. 

The " Down Town " restaurants bring one 
vividly back to London. They are underground, 
and there is the same thick volume of masculinity 
and masculine talk in them. They are a trifle more 
ornate, and the food is better cooked and of in- 
finitely greater variety (they would not be American 
otherwise), but over all the air is the same. 

Into the familiar business atmosphere of this 
quarter the Prince came early. He drove between 
crowds and there were big crowds at the points 
where he stopped — at the Woolworth building and 
at Trinity Church, that stands huddled and dwarfed 
beneath the basilicas of business. The intense in- 
terest of his visit began when he arrived at the 
Stock Exchange. 

The business on the floor was in full swing when 
he came out on to the marble gallery of the vast, 
square marble hall of the Exchange, and the busy 
swarm of money-gathering men beneath his eyes 
immediately stopped to cheer him. To look down, 
as he did, was to look down upon the floor of some 
great bazaar. The floor is set with ranks of kiosks 
spaced apart, about which men congregate only to 



338 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

divide and go all ways; these kiosks might easily be 
booths. The floor itself is in constant movement; 
it is a disturbed ant-heap with its denizens speeding 
about always in unconjectural movements. Groups 
gather, thrust hands and fingers upward, shout and 
counter-shout, as though bent on working up a 
fracas; then when they seem to have succeeded they 
make notes in small books and walk quietly away. 
Messengers, who must work by instinct, weave in 
and out of the stirring of ants perpetually. In a 
line of cubicles along one side of the Exchange, 
crowds of men seemed to be fighting each other for 
a chance at the telephone. 

Two of the tremendous walls of this hall are on 
the street, and superb windows allow in the light. 
On the two remaining walls are gigantic black- 
boards. Incessantly, small flaps are falling on these 
blackboards revealing numbers. They are the num- 
bers of members who have been " called " over the 
'phone or in some other way. The blackboards are 
in a constant flutter, the tiny flaps are always falling 
or shutting, as numbers appear and disappear, and 
the boards are starred with numbers waiting 
patiently for the eye of the member on the floor to 
look up and be aware of them. 

The Prince stood on the high gallery under the 
high windows, and watched with vivid curiosity the 
bustling scene below. He asked a number of eager 
questions, and the strange silent dance of numbers 
on the big blackboards intrigued him greatly. Un- 
derneath him the members gathered in a great 
crowd, calling up to him to come down on the floor. 



New York 339 

There was a jolly eagerness in their demands, and 
the Prince, as he went, seemed to hesitate as though 
he were quite game for the adventure. But he dis- 
appeared, and though the Bears and the Bulls 
waited a little while for him, he did not reappear. 
Those who knew that a full twelve-hour program 
could only be accomplished by following the time- 
table with rigid devotion had had their way. 

From the Stock Exchange the Prince went to the 
Sub-Treasury, and watched, fascinated, the miracle 
work of the money counters. The intricacies of 
currency were explained to him, and he was shown 
the men who went through mounds of coin, with 
lightning gestures separating the good from the bad 
with their instinctive finger-tips and with the ac- 
curacy of one of Mr. Ford's uncanny machines. He 
was told that the touch of these men was so ex- 
quisite that they could detect a " dud " coin instantly, 
and, to test them, such a coin was produced and 
marked, and well hidden in a pile of similar coins. 
The fingers of the teller went through the pile like 
a flash, and as he flicked the good coins towards 
him, and without ceasing his work, a coin span out 
from the mass towards the Prince. It was the coin 
he had marked. 



Passing among these business people and driving 
amid the quick crowds, the Prince had been con- 
solidating the sense of intimate friendship that had 
sprung up on the previous day. A wise American 
pressman had said to me on Tuesday: 



340 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

" New York people like what they've read about 
the Prince. They'll come out today to see if what 
they have read is true. Tomorrow they'll come out 
because they love him. And each day the crowds 
will get better." 

This proved true. The warmth of New York's 
friendliness increased as the days went on. The 
scene at the lunch given by the New York Chamber 
of Commerce proved how strong this regard had 
grown. The scene was remarkable because of the 
character and the quality of the men present. It 
was no admiration society. It was no gathering of 
sentimentalists. The men who attended that lunch 
were men not only of international reputation, but 
of international force, men of cautious fibre ac- 
customed to big encounters, not easily moved to 
emotion. And they fell under the charm of the 
Prince. 

One of them expressed his feelings concerning the 
scene to me. 

" He had it over us all the time," he said, laugh- 
ing. " There we were, several hundreds of grey- 
headed, hardened old stiffs, most of us over twice 
his age, and we stood up and yelled like college 
freshmen when he had finished speaking to us. 

" What did he say to us? Nothing very re- 
markable. He told us how useful we old ones in 
the money market had been as a backbone to the 
boys in the firing line. He told us that he felt that 
the war had revealed clearly the closeness of the 
relationship between the two Anglo-Saxon nations, 
how their welfare was interlocked and how the 



New York 341 



prosperity of each was essential to the prosperity of 
the other, and he agreed with the President of the 
Chamber's statement that British and American good 
faith and good will would go far to preserve the 
stability of the world. There's nothing very won- 
derful to that. It's true enough, but not altogether 
unknown. ... It was his manner that caught hold 
of us. The way he speaks, you see. His nervous- 
ness, and his grit in conquering his nervousness. 
His modesty; his twinkle of humour, all of him. 
He's one fine lad. I tell you we've had some big 
men in the Chamber in the last two years, but it's 
gilt-edged truth that none of the big ones had the 
showing that lad got today." 

From the Chamber of Commerce the Prince went 
to the Academy of Music where there was a picture 
and variety show staged for him, and which he en- 
joyed enormously. The thrill of this item of the 
program was rather in the crowd than in the show. 
It was an immense crowd, and for once it vanquished 
the efficient police and swarmed about His Royal 
Highness as he entered the building. While he was 
inside it added to its strength rather than diminished, 
and in the face of this crisis one of those men whose 
brains rise to emergencies had the bright idea of 
getting the Prince out by the side door. The crowd 
had also had that bright idea and the throng about 
the side door was, if anything, more dense than at 
the front. Through this laughing and cheering 
mass squads of good-humoured police butted a 
thread of passage for the happy Prince. 

The throng inside Madison Square Garden about 



34 2 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

the arena of the Horse Show was more decorous, as 
became its status, but it did not let that stifle its feel- 
ings. The Prince passed through from a cheering 
crowd outside to the bright, sharp clapping of those 
inside. He passed round the arena between ranks 
of Salvation Army lassies, who held, instead of bar- 
rier ropes, broad scarlet ribbons. 

There was a laugh as he touched his hair upon 
gaining the stark publicity of his box, and the laugh 
changed to something of a cheer when he caught 
sight of the chairs of pomp, two of them in frigid 
isolation, elbowing out smaller human fry. All knew 
from his very attitude what was going to happen 
to those chairs. And it happened. The chairs 
vanished. Small chairs and more of them took 
their place, and the Prince sat with genial people 
about him. 

The arena was a field of brightness. It was de- 
lightfully decorated with green upon lattice work. 
Over the competitors' entrance were canvas replicas 
of Tudor houses. In the ring the Prince saw many 
beautiful horses, fine hunters, natty little ponies pull- 
ing nattier carriages, trotters of mechanical perfec- 
tion, and big lithe jumpers. In the middle of the 
jumping competition he left his box and went into 
the ring, and spent some time there chatting with 
judges and competitors, and watching the horses 
take the hurdles and gates from close quarters. 

Leaving the building there happened one of those 
vivid little incidents which speak more eloquently 
than any effort of oratory could of the kinship of the 
two races in their war effort. A group of men in 



New York 343 



uniform who had been waiting by the exit sprang 
to attention as he came up. They were all Ameri- 
cans. They were all in British uniform — most 
of them in British Flying Corps uniform. As the 
Prince came up, they clicked round in a smart u Left 
turn," and marched before him out of the building. 

The Prince from thence on vanished for the day 
into a round of semi-social functions, but he did not 
escape the crowds. 

Walking up Fifth Avenue with friends shortly 
before dinner-time, we came upon a bunched jumble 
of people outside the " Waldorf-Astoria." It was 
a crowd that a man in a hurry could not argue with. 
It filled the broad street, and it did not care if it 
impeded traffic. We were not in a hurry, so we 
stood and looked. I asked my friends what was 
happening here, and one of them chuckled and an- 
swered : 

" They've got him again." 

"Him? Who — you can't mean the Prince? 
He's on Renown now, resting, or getting ready for 
a dinner. There's nothing down for him." 

My friend simply chuckled again. 

" Who else would it be? " he said. " How they 
do gather round waiting for that smile of his. Flies 
round a honey-pot. Ah, I thought so." 

The Prince made a dash of an exit from the 
hotel. He jumped into the car, and at once there 
was a forest of hands and handkerchiefs and flags 
waving, and his own hand and hat seemed to go up 
and wave as part of one and the same movement. 
It was a spontaneous " Hallo, People! Hallo, 



344 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Prince ! " A jolly affair. The motor started, 
pushed through the crowd. There was a sharp pic- 
ture of the Prince half standing, half kneeling, look- 
ing back and laughing and waving to the crowd. 
Then he was gone. 

The men and women of the throng turned away 
smiling, as though something good had happened. 

" They've seen him. They can go home now," 
said my friend. " My, ain't they glad about them- 
selves. . . . And isn't he the one fine scout? " 



VI 

When the Prince made his appearance on Thurs- 
day, November 20th, in the uniform of a Welsh 
Guardsman he came in for a startling ovation. Not 
only were many people gathered about the Yacht 
Club landing-stage and along the route of his drive, 
but at one point a number of ladies pelted him with 
flowers. Startled though the Prince was, he kept 
his smile and his sense of humour. He said dryly 
that he had never known what it was to feel like a 
bride before, and he returned this volley with his 
friendly salute. 

He was then setting out to the Grand Central 
Station for his trip up the Hudson to West Point, the 
Military Academy of the United States. 

In the superb white station, under a curved arch 
of ceiling as blue as the sky, he took the full force of 
an affection that had been growing steadily through 
the visit. The immense floor of the building was 
dense and tight with people, and the Prince, as he 



New York 345 



came to the balcony that made the stair-head was 
literally halted by the great gust of cheering that 
beat up to him, and was forced to stand at the 
salute for a full minute. 

The journey to West Point skirted the Hudson, 
where lovely view after lovely view of the piled-up 
and rocky further shore tinted in the russet and gold 
of the dying foliage came and went. There was a 
rime of ice already in the lagoons, and the little 
falls that usually tumbled down the rocks were 
masses of glittering icicles. 

The castellated walls of West Point overhang the 
river above a sharp cliff; the buildings have a dra- 
matic grouping that adds to the extreme beauty of 
the surroundings. Toward this castle on the cliff 
the Prince went by a little steam ferry, was taken in 
escort by a smart body of American cavalrymen, 
and in their midst went by automobile up the road 
to the grey towers of West Point. 

Immediately on his arrival at the saluting point 
on the great campus the horizon-blue cadets, who 
will one day be the leaders of the American army, 
began to march. 

Paraded by the buildings, they fell into columns of 
companies with mechanical precision. With precise 
discipline they moved out on to the field, the com- 
panies as solid as rocks but for the metronomic beat 
of legs and arms. 

They were tall, smart youths, archaic and modern 
in one. With long blue coats, wide trousers, shakos, 
broad white belts, as neat as painted lines, over 
breast and back, and, holding back the flaps of capes, 



346 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

they looked figures from the fifties. But the swing 
of the marching companies, the piston-like certainty 
of their action, the cold and splendid detachment of 
their marching gave them all the flare of a corps 
d'elite. 

Forming companies almost with a click on the 
wide green, they saluted and stood at attention 
while the Prince and his party inspected the lines. 
Then, the Prince at the saluting point again, the 
three companies in admirable order marched past. 
There was not a flaw in the rigid ranks as they swept 
along, their eyes right, the red-sashed " four year 
men " holding slender swords at the salute. 

The Prince lunched with the officers, and after 
lunch the cadets swarmed into the room to hear him 
speak, having first warmed up the atmosphere with a 
rousing and prolonged college yell. Having spoken 
in praise of their discipline and bearing, the Prince 
was made the subject of another yell, and more, was 
saluted with the college whistle, a thing unique and 
distinctive, that put the seal upon his visit. 

That night the Prince played host upon Renown, 
giving a brilliant dinner to his friends in New York. 
This was the only other ceremony of the day. 

VII 

Friday, November 21st, the Prince's last day in 
New York, was an extraordinarily full one, and 
that full not merely in program, but in emotion. In 
that amazing day it seemed to me that the people of 
this splendid city sought to express with superb elo- 



New York 34.J 



quence the regard they felt for him, seemed to make 
a point of trying to make his last day memorable. 

The morning was devoted to a semi-private 
journey to Oyster Bay, in order that the Prince 
might place a wreath on the tomb of President 
Roosevelt. The Prince had several times expressed 
his admiration for the great and forceful American 
who represented so much of what was individual in 
the national character, and his visit to the burial- 
place was a tribute of real feeling. 

After lunch at the Piping Rock Club he returned 
to Renown, where he had planned to hold a recep- 
tion after his own heart to a thousand of New York's 
children. 

On Renown a score of " gadgets " had been pre- 
pared for the fun of the children. The capstans 
had been turned into roundabouts, a switchback and 
a chute had been fixed up, the deck of the great steel 
monster had been transformed into fairyland, while 
a " scrumptious " tea in a pretty tea lounge had been 
prepared all out of Navy magic. 

The tugs that were to bring off the guests, how- 
ever, brought few that could come under the head- 
ing of " kiddies." Those that were not quite 
grown up, were in the young man and young woman 
stage. Fairyland had to be abandoned. Round- 
about and switchback and chute were abandoned, and 
only that " scrumptious " tea remained in the pro- 
gram. It was a pleasant afternoon, but not a 
" kiddies' " afternoon. 

The evening was quick with crowds. 

It began in a drive through crowds to the Pilgrims' 



348 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

Dinner at the Plaza Hotel, and that, in itself, was a 
crowd. The Plaza is none of your bijou caravan- 
serais. It is vast and vivid and bright, as a New 
York hotel can be, and that is saying a good deal. 
But it was not vast enough. One great marble room 
could not contain all the guests, another and another 
was taken in, so that the banquet was actually spread 
over three or four large chambers opening out of 
the main chamber. Here the leading figures of 
America and the leading Britons then in New York 
met together in a sort of breezy informality, and they 
gave the Prince a most tremendous welcome. 

And when he began to speak — after the nimble 
scintillations of Mr. Chauncey Depew — they gave 
him another. And they rose up in a body, and 
moved inward from the distant rooms to be within 
earshot — a sight for the Messenger in Macbeth, 
for he would have seen a moving grove of golden 
chair legs, held on high, as the diners marched 
with their seating accommodation held above their 
heads. 

Crowds again under the vivid lights of the streets, 
as the Prince drove to the mighty crowd waiting for 
him in the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome is one 
of the largest, if it is not the largest, music-hall in 
the world. It has an enormous sweep of floor, and 
an enormous sweep of galleries. The huge space 
of it takes the breath away. It was packed. 

As the Prince entered his box, floor and galleries 
rose up with a sudden and tremendous surge, and 
sent a mighty shout to him. The National Anthems 
of England and America were obliterated in the gust 



'New York 349 



of affectionate noise. Minutes elapsed before that 
great audience remembered that it was at the play, 
and that the Prince had come to see the play. It 
sat down reluctantly, saving itself for his departure, 
watching him as he entered into enjoyment of the 
brave and grandiose spectacular show on the stage. 

And when he rose to go the audience loosed itself 
again. It held him there with the power of its 
cheering. It would not let him stir from the build- 
ing until it had had a word from him. It was dom- 
inant, it had its way. In answer to the splendid out- 
burst the Prince could do nothing but come to the 
edge of his box and speak. 

In a clear voice that was heard all over the build- 
ing he thanked them for the wonderful reception he 
had received that night, and in New York during 
the week. " I thank you," he said, " and I bid you 
all good night." 

Then he went out into the cheering streets. 

It was an astonishing display in the street. The 
throng was so dense, the shouting so great that the 
sound of it drove into the silent houses of other 
theatres. And the audiences in those other theatres 
caught the thrill of it. They " cut " their plays, 
came pouring out into the street to join the throng 
and the cheering; it was through this carnival of 
affection that the Prince drove along the streets to a 
reception, and a brilliant one, given by Mr. Wana- 
maker, whose ability as Chairman of the Reception 
Committee had largely helped to make the Prince's 
visit to New York so startling a success. 



350 Westward with the Prince of Wales 

VIII 

On that note of splendid friendliness the Prince's 
too short stay in America ended. On Saturday, 
November 22nd, he held a reception on Renown, 
saying good-bye to endless lines of friendly people 
of all classes and races who thronged the great war 
vessel. 

All these people crowded about the Prince and 
seemed loth to part with him, and he seemed just 
as unwilling to break off an intimacy only just be- 
gun. Only inexorable time and the Admiralty ended 
the scene, and the great ship with its escort of small, 
lean war-craft moved seaward along the cheering 
shore. 

Crowds massed on the grass slope under River- 
side Drive, and on the esplanade itself. The sky- 
scrapers were cheering grandstands, as the ships 
steamed along the impressive length of Manhattan. 
They passed the Battery, where he had landed, and 
the Narrows, where the escorting boats left him. 
Then Renown headed for Halifax, where his tour 
ended. 

Certainly America and the Prince made the best of 
impressions on each other. There is much in his 
quick and modern personality that finds immediate 
satisfaction in the American spirit; much in him- 
self that the American responds to at once. When 
he declared, as he did time and time again, that he 
had had a wonderful time, he meant it with sincerity. 
And of his eagerness to return one day there can 
be no doubt. 



New York 351 



Of all the happy moments on this long and happy 
tour, this visit to America, brief as it was, was one 
of the happiest. It was a brilliant finale to the bril- 
liant Canadian days. 

(i) 



THE END 



oc 






